If it’s a special cheese you’re looking for, it’s more than likely that Luciano Di Leonardo will have something in store for you in his small, but very well stocked, shop on Corso Casale, close to the Superga rack railway station. This is his whole life, after all. He began working as a messenger boy for a large deli in the centre of Turin and though many years have gone by since then but when he starts talking about a mountain Castelmagno, say, or a Fiore Sardo or a Caciocavallo from Modica, Luciano is still touched. And he’s right to be because these and other cheeses on sale here – we might add the old-style Stracchino of the Valli Orobiche or Agrì from Valtorta, a village in the Val Brembana, a Slow Food Presidium – with flavours and aromas that tell of the craft skills of centuries. Visiting the shop is like going on a journey with Piedmont as the epicentre, which after taking in the whole Italian peninsula, crosses the Alps into France and Switzerland and proceeds to the British Isles. Here Robiola di Bossolasco sits side by side with Comté aged for more than 30 months, and Swiss Près Soleil from the Valle dell’Emme shares space with Plaisentif, a cheese made with milk from cattle that pasture in the mountains in the season when the violets come into flower, from the Val Chisone. Closed on Sunday and Wednesday afternoon.
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