Asiago

The Spritz Club finally made it up to Asiago! Mela was off having her own Alpen vacation in Austria, so we brought Uva along as an honorary Spritz Club member. It was about an hour drive, and parts of it were incredibly steep and windy. If you have trouble with car sickness, make sure to take your Dramamine!

As you’ve probably guessed, Asiago is known for its cheese as well as its skiing because of its location in the foothills of the Alps. During WWI, it was the site of a major clash between the forces of Italy and Austria; today, one of the major attractions in Asiago is its WWI memorial. We made that our first stop.

We’d heard about the memorial from other people who had visited, but I was surprised by the sheer size of it. It’s massive! It’s built on top of a hill overlooking Asiago, but unfortunately we weren’t able to see the view from the top because they had the stairs blocked off. Inside along the walls are tiles with the names of all the fallen soldiers – they’re also engraved on the pages of two brass books. It was a beautiful memorial and definitely worth seeing if you’re in Asiago.

Naturally we were determined to get some cheese while we were in the area. Figuring there would be a handful of cheese shops in the center of town, we meandered to the main square. Asiago is very small and the walk from the memorial only took about 10 minutes. We found the central piazza and… where were the cheese shops?! In fact, we didn’t see a single one. We found some small food shops, but not the kind of thing we were looking for.

One of my favorite things about Asiago was the architecture. It’s fun to just look at the buildings as you walk around downtown. There is very clear influence from Austria and Switzerland, and maybe Germany – I couldn’t help but think of Heidi with Shirley Temple. Ananas and Uva were reminded of The Sound of Music, but I’ve never seen that. Before we continued our quest for cheese, we decided to investigate the church in the square. It was very pretty, inside and out.

We decided to follow a Trip Advisor tip and check out a cheese shop outside of town. After a little driving through the surrounding hills, we found the Caseificio Sociale Pennar. It’s easy to miss – there’s no big cheese wheel sign to indicate what the building actually is, so you have to keep your eyes peeled. Inside was cheese, cheese, and more cheese! It’s a small place, but the people are friendly and they’ll give samples of any cheese you want. Just ask for an “assaggio” (a taste). Luckily one of them spoke a little English, but I wouldn’t count on him being there all the time! Asiago cheese, by the way, is super yummy. The fresh stuff is soft and mild, I’d say a little bit like provolone. The longer it ages, as with most cheeses, the stronger and harder it gets. I left the shop with a block of fresh and a block of two-year aged Asiago, and the flavors are incredibly different.

A little way down the road we found the agriturismo Ca’ Sorda, where we stopped to have lunch. An agriturismo is basically an agricultural B&B. The sign indicated that they were open for dinner, but we went in and asked if they were open for lunch just in case. I think we got lucky – normally they’re probably not open for lunch, but on this particular day they were prepared for a large group of hungry skiers who were staying with them. (We discovered this by default when they all filed in with raccoon-style goggle tans.) Since the kitchen was already up and running, they must have figured three more people wouldn’t make much difference. The lady who seated us was very friendly and tried very hard to explain to us the menu items in her limited English (there was no physical menu to look at).

In the end, we had a delicious lunch with wine and dessert for a reasonable price. I would highly recommend it to anyone! And check out the decor. You can’t beat that. In the summer I’m sure they have outdoor seating, but we were a bit early in the season for that.