Taking It to the Streets | culture: the word on cheese
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Taking It to the Streets

| December 3, 2009
This article is from: Winter 2009
A man holds his cheese before a classical column

You might call it a cheese insurgency. But really it’s more like a pilgrimage. Every other year, the Slow Food Cheese Festival in Bra, Italy, brings cheese devotees from around the world to its cobbled stradas. Here are some faces in the crowd.

Pointing across an intersection holding his cheeses

Alfonso Alvarez Valera (Tembleque, Spain)
cheese: Manchego

Chatting it up wearing particolored striped aprons

Bramante Corbo & Roberto Sansone (Barisciano, Italy)
cheese: Pecorino

Holding his yogurt among busy pedestrians

Eddie Mukundi (Kapenguria, Kenya)
cow’s milk yogurt

Leaning against a windowsill with his cheeses and eyeing the ladies

Giandomenico Negro (Bubbio, Italy)
cheese: Robiola di Roccaverano

Father rests a hand on bicycle leaning against wall; son sits on bicycle and grins

Affineur Girogio Cravero & Giacomo Cravero (Bra, Italy)

Looking aside at an intersection

Cecilia Istrate (Fundata, Romania)
cheese: Brânză de Burduf

Talking excitedly amongst themselves

Affineurs: (l-r) Carlo Fiore (Arona, Italy), Randolph Hodgson (London, England), Herve Mons (Saint-Haon-le-Châtel, France)

Bearded with a fedora and a leather apron with shorts and leather sandals

Cheesemaker Fabio Graseselli (Stagno Lombardo, Italy)

Holding two chunks of cheese in each hand as two children, seated at the curb, look up at him

Wotjek Komperda (Malopolskie, Poland)
cheese: Oscypek

Glogovac, tall and thin, rests his arm on the shoulder of Filipovechere, short and stout

Glogovac, tall and thin, rests his arm on the shoulder of Filipovechere, short and stout

Miroslav Glogovac & Anto Filipovichere (Bosnia Herzegovina)

Holding basketball-sized wedges of cheese and chuckling

(l-r) James Montgomery, Richard Calver, & Tom Calver
(Somerset, England)
cheeses: Montgomery & Westcombe Cheddar

Wearing a beret and looking both ways before crossing the street

Adrien Lahitette (Ledeuix, France)
cheese: Tomme de Chèvre

Two seated, two standing, all chatting convivially

(l-r) Peggy Smith (Point Reyes, Calif.), David Gremmels & Cary Bryant (Central Point, Ore.), Allison Hooper (Websterville, Vt.)

Posing in their chef uniforms

(l-r) Niccolo Brambilla (Roanne, France), Katy Gunn (London, England), Mario Marini (Arona, Italy)

Photographer Wil Edwards

Wil Edwards is a writer, photographer, and currently a Culinary Initiative Coordinator at the Manhattan-based nonprofit Fedcap. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

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