Growing up I never cared for parmesan cheese, but then I was only exposed to the Kraft junk.
My wife works in a moderately upscale grocery store and recently brought home a wedge of good quality parmesan. And I love it! So she brought home a few different brands to try.
I’m a big fan of SarVecchio. But genuine Parmigiano Reggiano has a stronger smell and taste… dare I say it is a little too barfy for me. Not a huge fan.
Any cheese experts out there that can explain the difference?
Afraid not, but the thing I love about decent Parmesan is that it smells of pineapple! 
(Have a sniff and see if you agree!)
Me neither but I agree that some Reggiano tastes barfy - thats the prefect word to describe it.
Having said that, packaged grated parmesan isn’t very good. I buy it freshly grated. I splurge on it because it isnt cheap. But best thing in my caesar salad dressing or on anything. I use it on my cauliflower mac and cheese too BTW- I buy about 6 little bags of it and freeze it. That works.
The Reggiano is the “real” Parmesan, cheese labeled simple as “Parmesan” and not “Parmigiano- Reggiano” is effectively cheese that didn’t grade high enough.
hm… if “barfy” is the mark of excellence, give me the less worthy stuff - to me it is an improvement.
European cheeses have legal appellations, similar to wines. In general, the products actually bearing the legal name are the authentic ones, and are the authentic product. In an earlier thread true Balsamic Vinegar was used as an example.
Parmesan is a regional cheese, produced in a specific area, with specific ingredients and aged for a specific time in order to receive the Appellation. It is considered a Dry Aged.cheese, the longer the aging the more the lactose breaks down, and the sharper the flavor. There are many others out there, Asiago being another tasty one.
Yawn. I am familiar with the legal appellations and couldn’t care less. The snooty joy of tasting the most authentic product is quickly lost if it tastes like barf to me. Tastes are subjective.
“The barfy taste comes from the fact that is aged longer”
or
“The barfy taste comes from the cows and the soil in that particular region”
I was only looking for an explanation of the flavor difference.
Parmesan cheese has lot’s of butyrate (a ketone body) like grass fed butter so it might help you burn body fat faster. I love Parmesan cheese but like to make my own butyrate so that’s why I add resistant starch to my diet, must feed them butyrate producing gut bugs.
Oh yes and that ‘barfy’ smell from the quality of Parmesan, that’s a good indication of how high the butyrate is in the cheese. The barfier and smellier the Parmesan; the better it is for you.
Some of this is biochemistry. An onion from Vidalia actually tastes different because of the soil it’s been grown in, and that’s that. No amount of legal wrangling to permit onions grown outside of that area to be called “Vidalia onions” will make them so. A wine expert can often tell the exact vineyard that produced a particular wine, because of the soil the grapes were grown in.
On the other hand, a much of this comes down to individual taste. A lot of delicacies taste odd to the uninitiated. The British, for example, like (or used to like) well-hung game birds that most of the rest of us would consider partially rotted. My relatives, who live in deer country, love the taste of venison, whereas I, a city boy, usually find the taste too gamey to be enjoyable. I love sushi, my country cousins not so much. Koreans love the taste of kimchi, and go to great lengths to train their children to enjoy it. And so on.
A lot of this has to do with what our palate is trained to enjoy. I personally prefer the taste of actual French Brie cheese to the taste of the Brie-like Wisconsin product, and real Champagne to the taste of sparkling wines made elsewhere, but it’s not snobbery, just a preference. Swiss-style cheese made elsewhere than Switzerland tastes just fine to me. Don’t let other people’s snobbery dictate to you, but do listen to their explanations of what they enjoy and why—you might just end up expanding your range of pleasures.
A true world of difference, there. Kraft “Parmesan” has additives and chemicals that aren’t in real Parmigiano-Reggiano. A few years back, Kraft got sued because their “100% Grated Parmesan Cheese” had ~4% wood pulp in it, as an anti-clumping agent. 
Kraft can’t even legally sell “Parmesan” cheese in Europe - it’s the U.S. that routinely ignores such legal protections.
I’ve never had SarVecchio, but it looks really good, and it seems to be a special case.
1903 - Kraft starts selling cheese.
1914 - Kraft buys its first cheese plant in Stockton, IL - northern Illinois about 8 miles from the Wisconsin border. Now Kraft can make and sell its own cheese.
1922 - Kraft opens a new cheese plant in Antigo, Wisconsin. It would become the largest producer of ‘Swiss’ cheese in the world.
1940s - A different type of cheese began being produced. While the ingredients would vary over the years, it was the ancestor of SarVecchio. Decade by decade, it was noticed that the Antigo plant made better cheese than others, even with the same ingredients and processes.
1993 - Phillip Morris buys Kraft. It’s announced that the Antigo cheese plant will be shut down, the operations moving to California. The plant employees purchase the plant and continue as Antigo Cheese.
2006 - Antigo Cheese was great at making cheese, but poor at marketing, and the plant is sold to Sartori Foods. For a long time the particular cheese had been called ‘Stravecchio.’ In Italy, Parmigiano-Reggiano cheeses are aged at least 2 years, while Stravecchio is a subset, aged 3 years. “Vecchio” = “old.” The name of the cheese is changed to SarVecchio.
Jeff - I had to laugh; I guess I can see how you might describe Parmigiano-Reggiano as “barfy.” I bought 1/8 of one of those big wheels early last year, and loved it. Really a hard cheese, tough to melt, but fantastic for grating. Very complex, nutty flavor with tiny crunchy bits of crystallized protein.
That Wisconsin cheese plant, the workers there, and the cheeses they make appear to be something special - I’ve gotta try that SarVecchio.
It is fantastic… relatively mild, apparently, but delicious and has the crystals you speak of. I’m becoming obsessed with it.
Their is hardly a cheese (or parmesan) I don’t like. As long as it’s actual “cheese” and not some processed fake cheese. And that has nothing to do with what is or isn’t healthy for you. I’m just talking about taste.
My GF always wants some kind of fancy, grass fed, all organic zippety do da cheese. I just want plain ol’ cheese… In bulk lol
Yeah, Chris, “bulk” is good. I’ve grudgingly gone from expecting cheese to be $2 per lb. in the U.S. to accepting $3 - $4. But with Parmigiano-Reggiano we’re talking much closer to $20. 
I imagine the Sartori products are fairly dear too…
I should have phrased my response in a simpler way. I thought you’d understand that the factors controlled by the Appellation are what imparts the distinct, unique, and consistent characteristics in a product. In this case the flavor of the cheese.
