05/18/2026
20 YEARS OF ESSEX ST CHEESE!
To celebrate this milestone, we are getting the inside scoop from those in the Essex cheese mines about their first meetings with Daphne.
Here we have Giorgio Cravero, owner and affineur
« Digging into memories, I met Daphne for the first time in Torino during Slow Food show Salone del Gusto in October 2006.
In 2007, we met twice. In May in Seattle at “Seattle Cheese Festival,” where we planted the seed for the collaboration between Cravero and Essex (that officially started a year later).
In October, she organized a legendary “Parmigiano class and tasting” at Artisanal Cheese in New York, which was the real beginning of Cravero and Essex relationship.
In January 2009, following our first show together as a duo at FFS in San Francisco, we flew to New Orleans to visit mongers and chefs, and we did a tour at Lake Pontchartrain, where the photos were taken.
Legend again: on the way to N.O., we flew SF-Dallas, where we were pushed out from the aircraft from the stewards as we didn’t realize that we were landed as we were totally absorbed in a chat about Parmigiano Reggiano production and maturation and Italian translation of the main themes. We spoke about that funny moment forever.
One more extra vivid memory.
In a cab in Manhattan, June 2011, the day after the second edition of CMI, during an amazingly passionate chat we create together the past-present-future Cravero Parm claim ‘Not a commodity’ »
A true collaboration for the ages.
Pic 1: Daphne in the streets of New Orleans, January 22, 2009
Pic 2&3: Giorgio and Daphne snapping pics of each other on Lake Pontchartrain the next day.
