Top 10 Unbelievable Dairy Fun Facts: The Delicious Secrets You Never Knew!

1. Testun al Barolo: Sweet Grape-Flavored Cheese & Butter Master

If following the herd to the cheese-wine fountain of youth sounds like a brie-lliant idea, this Italian artisan has got you covered: Beppino Occelli creates Testun al Barolo, a unique ubriaco-style cheese aged for 90 days and enriched with Barolo DOCG, making it a delightfully sweet grape-flavored masterpiece. And just to butter you up, he's also been churning out his famous alpine meadow-grazed-cow butter since 1976.
Source => forevercheese.com

2. CowPots: Eco-friendly, Manure-made Plant Pots

Holy cow-puccino! These udderly fantastic farmers have moo-ved into a new era of sustainability and waste reduction: Freund's Farm in Connecticut has created biodegradable CowPots made from composted manure of their 275 cows, reducing soil phosphorus buildup and powering their farm with 100% solar energy.
Source => businesswire.com

Discover the world's oldest cheese found in an Egyptian tomb! Made from cow's milk in 1200 BCE, its taste would shock even blue cheese lovers today. 🧀🔍

=> Fun Facts about Cheese

3. Gouda: The Cheese King of the World

Whoever said Gouda's not good-a might need to check their cheese facts: Comprising 50 to 60% of the world's cheese consumption, Gouda boasts a rich flavor and smooth texture, originating from its namesake city in the Netherlands, with seven varieties that'll keep every taste bud in a state of cheesy bliss.
Source => cheese.com

4. Cheddar: The Innovator's Village

Hold onto your cheese hats, cheddar enthusiasts: Cheddar, a village in Somerset, England, is the home of Joseph Harding's cheddar-making innovations that cheeses off subpar cheesemakers to this day! Seriously though, his 19th-century techniques revolutionized the dairy world and bagged Somerset's Westcountry Farmhouse Cheddar a prestigious European Union Protected Designation of Origin.
Source => anglotopia.net

5. Fonterra: The Dairy MI6

In a world where cows could be secret agents, Fonterra would be their MI6: This dairy powerhouse, owned by roughly 9,000 New Zealand farmers, is responsible for an udderly impressive 30% of global dairy exports and rakes in around NZ$23 billion annually. James Bond would be moo-ved with envy!
Source => en.wikipedia.org

6. Camel Milk: Multi-functional, Allergy-friendly Desert Delicacy

Hump day just got milkier: Camel milk not only boasts five times the vitamin C and higher iron levels than cow's milk, but it also lacks allergy-causing whey proteins, making it a true desert delicacy in high demand. Produced on small farms across Ohio, Missouri, and Indiana, it can be enjoyed raw, pasteurized, powdered, or even lathered up as a soap – just be prepared to break the camel's bank!
Source => washingtonpost.com

7. Roquefort: Mold from Mountain Caves

Cancel your shepherding plans, folks! Contrary to the cheesy legend of absentminded shepherds, Roquefort cheese wasn't born from a forgotten lunch morphing into a moldy mess: The real story lies in the delicately rotted bread nestled within the caves of Cambalou Mountain. Here, slices mature for six to eight weeks, developing a distinctive Penicillium roqueforti mold, which, when added to ewe's milk, blesses the cheese with its iconic blue-green veins.
Source => myfrenchlife.org

8. Swiss Cheese: The Bacterial Moon Craters

Swiss cheese's holey reputation might leave some feeling bleu, but the secret behind these "cheesy" lunar craters is nothing to brien at: The primary culprit for Swiss cheese's iconic holes is the addition of Propionibacterium freudenreichii subspecies shermanii bacteria to the milk, which produce carbon dioxide gas that creates round openings in the cheese, while certain other varieties, like Fontina and Gouda, have similar "eye"-catching features from fermentation gas.
Source => theconversation.com

9. French Stinkfests: The Good Bacteria Cheese Party

Get ready to say "cheese" and take a whiff of France's aromatic stinkfests – these fromages are anything but mousy: There are over 350 varieties of traditional raw milk cheese in France, with clever French scientists using good bacteria to aid in producing safer, yet still funky, cheesy delights, and inspiring a cheese buyer from London to launch a Kickstarter campaign to translate a French cheese microbiology manual into English to share the craft with the Anglophone artisanal communities.
Source => npr.org

10. Donkey Milk: Ancient Beauty Secret in a Tub

Who needs a moisturizing facial when you can bathe in a tub of donkey milk like Cleopatra: Donkey milk has been treasured since ancient times for its medicinal and cosmetic benefits, utilized by the likes of Cleopatra, Emperor Nero's wife Poppea, and Napoleon Bonaparte's sister Pauline to maintain the beauty of their skin; it was even prescribed by Hippocrates for health purposes and praised by Pliny the Elder in his work Naturalis Historia, and today, it's finding renewed interest as a functional food and cow's milk substitute for children with severe allergies.
Source => ncbi.nlm.nih.gov