Eros Buratti is a cheese affineur, an ancient profession that is part of the traditions of a land surrounded by green pastures.
The affineur, as Eros uses to say, is the one who brings the cheese “from its kindergarten to university”, that is, from the cellar to the table. While the producer has the role of following the cheese during the first steps, the affineur works with already made products, taken “fuori sale”, as they say.
Eros carefully selects his producers: family businesses, mainly from Piedmont, and a great number of Ossola Valley’s companies. He prefers raw milk producers, the ones who work with non-pasteurised milk, like the Taleggio producers of Val Taleggio and Valsassina.
Eros favours local products because cheese refinement requires features that comply with the production environment. That means that the refinement of a Sicilian pecorino far from the place where they produce it would result in the product’s deterioration and in the loss of its original features.