Grana Padano and Parmigiano Reggiano: our comparison.

Two centuries-old cheeses to discover their differences and history

Omnipresent on the tables of the North, Parmigiano Reggiano and Grana Padano stand out among the most used dairy products in our cuisine, when they are not tasted in purity after a good oxygenation: to fully appreciate their organoleptic characteristics, in fact, they should be left out of the fridge for at least an hour, preparing a tasty accompaniment in the meantime.

Both cheeses have boasted the DOP mark for decades, but they have a much longer history, with medieval roots. The common points between the two Italian products are truly numerous: lactose-free, they have almost the same nutritional properties in terms of proteins and mineral salts, properties derived from a raw processing that follows the same ancient phases.

What makes them, therefore, two distinct products?

The origins

There was a time when Parmigiano Reggiano carried a double name, coined independently by the provinces of Parma and Reggio Emilia.

The latter, in particular, referred to its typical cheese as “Grana Reggiano”, using the generic term "grana" to indicate its hard and grainy consistency. Only in the 1930s did the two names come together, and the designation “C.G.T. Parmigiano Reggiano” appeared for the first time, where the "G" in the acronym still stands for “Grana.”

The Grana Padano, on the other hand, originated as “caseus vetus,” or “aged cheese”: it was the learned monks of the Abbey of Chiaravalle who referred to the product with the two Latin terms, but the people, less inclined to use a language distant from daily speech, simply named the novelty “Grana”, associating the word that described its consistency with the place names where it was produced (for example, the Grana Lodigiano).
Thus, the first mentions of the cheese gathered together (again) the Grana and the city of Parma.

The Stresa Convention

To address the confusion in the nomenclature of cheeses and assign distinct types to products with precise characteristics, an international meeting was held in June 1951 to establish an official regulation to be adopted by the individual states participating in the Convention.

In Italy, this was done in 1954, with slight regulatory adjustments that allowed for some regional adaptations, especially for the name of Grana (for the city of Trento, Trentingrana).
The first differentiation between Parmigiano Reggiano and Grana Padano, therefore, is determined by the production area, which is much more limited in the case of Parmigiano (four provinces versus the 32 of the Grana by definition).

But does it really all come down to a matter of boundaries?

Some more differences

Although the geographical issue is identifying, it is not the only one to keep in mind: in fact, on average, the cost per kilo of Parmigiano Reggiano  is about 5€ higher than that of Grana, not only due to the different production volumes, which are physiologically higher for Grana Padano.

What impacts the prices of the cheeses is also the different aging duration, the first stage of which occurs after the first 9 months for Grana, while the first labeling for Parmigiano is only applied when the twelfth month is reached.
The aging of Parmigiano continues indefinitely (there has even been a record cheese, aged for 18 years!), with an average consumption aimed at the product aged for 24 months, while Grana is more often consumed at 15 months: it is no coincidence that beyond 20 months, Grana Padano is branded as “Riserva”.

The most technical peculiarities

In general, the consumer can keep in mind that to produce Parmigiano Reggiano, one must adhere to a more stringent specification, which allows very few margins of maneuver for the producer.

The diet of the cows must be based exclusively on hay and grass from the production area, without resorting to silage grains; their milk must be collected twice a day and coagulated with the whey naturally obtained from the previous day; once the aged cheese is obtained, the markings are removed if it does not meet the selected quality standards determined by experts (something that actually happens for Grana Padano as well).

Despite these differences, Parmigiano Reggiano and Grana Padano are both DOP excellence products, different twins that deserve their worldwide fame: choosing to have one rather than the other on the table will remain a matter of personal preferences.

Chiara Tomasella