Stanga di Dobbiaco

Also known as Toblacher Stangenkäse, this sweet, delicate cow’s milk cheese filled with tiny holes has been made in the Val Pusteria dairy since the 1880s century. Now called the Latteria Tre Cime Mondolatte ‘Milk World’, it offers tours of the works, a museum, shop and cheesy restaurant, all worth a stop if you’re visiting the dramatic Tre Cime di Lavaredo.

Stanga di Dobbiaco, invented as a way to use up excess milk, is aged for a minimum of six months. It’s eaten as is, or cut into thick slices and grilled, when it’s traditionally served with polenta and porcini mushrooms.

Among the Tre Cime dairy’s other products are ‘hay milk’ (Heumilch) from cows only fed on hay or grass (and not silage) and ‘grey cheese’ (Formaggio Grigio or Graukäse), a South Tyrolean speciality. Produced with pasteurized acid-coagulated skimmed milk (left over after the cream goes into butter) it’s named after the grey mold that covers it and is certainly an acquired taste: intense, smelly and best when served with vinegar, oil, onion and pepper.