Take an excellent, high quality product and turn it into something unique.
Transform it, through an almost alchemical process of innovative combinations and complex processing, into something never seen before, incredibly good and with unforgettable flavours.
This is affinage, the art of cheese making in which the Carpenedo family is an innovator, a master and a guardian. Casearia Carpenedo is a place where outstanding creativity, superb raw materials and precious age-old techniques are combined with patience, love and deep understanding – the ingredients necessary for refining impeccable cheese.
Antonio, the father, and his sons Ernesto and Alessandro are known all over the world as custodians and ambassadors of know-how that has characterised what is one of the most unique and innovative Italian cheese making concerns of the last 50 years.
The secret, because this is what it is, is called the Carpenedo Method, a set of processing procedures – the result of years of experiments and enhancements which, when combined with passion and respect for the subject, lead to skilful combinations and dosages of ingredients and scents.
Like many stories of success and excellence, Casearia Carpenedo is a journey through the 1900s, starting in the Veneto region, a land of major developments, inventions and opportunities. A journey which still continues today.
It was 1961 when a still very young Antonio started helping his father do the job of casoìn, a word in Veneto dialect meaning the keeper of a local grocery store specialised in cheese.
Antonio admired his father’s delicate and considerate gestures in handling and selling his products, and started to take meticulous care of the cheeses. He grasped the importance of time for developing flavour, the role of moisture in preserving cheese and the right environmental characteristics for ageing.
In the 1960s Antonio took over a small dairy in Rovarè in the province of Treviso. A self-taught cheese maker through experimentation and innovation, by 1965 he became one of the first to export his products outside the province of Treviso and beyond the region’s borders.
In 1976, on the back of the award Spino d’Oro award from the city of Thiene for his Casatella Trevigiana DOP cheese, Antonio, never shy of a new challenge, embarked on a great cheese ageing adventure.
The idea of the first aged cheese ever to be marketed was born from an agricultural tradition in the areas bordering the Piave river: Ubriaco®, a trademark owned solely by Casearia Carpenedo. Antonio’s dairy became the first recognised cheese refining laboratory in Italy.
Since then Antonio has never stopped giving voice to creativity, from the use of grape skins to experimentation with hay, walnut leaves, pepper, spices, beer, liqueurs and many other ingredients and fragrances that today make up the vast repertoire of Casearia Carpenedo’s Formaggi di Cantina®.
Antonio Carpenedo is still the beacon of a modern and vibrant company that today is expertly managed by his sons Ernesto and Alessandro, who have built on their father’s personal and professional teachings.
Thanks to great dedication, determination and unique, exceptional cheeses, Casearia Carpenedo is known internationally for its food products, available in over 30 countries worldwide.