Donkey cheese showcased at Somerset show

There’s a new rival for wagyu beef and white truffle for the title of the world’s most expensive delicacy – donkey cheese.

Pule, which is made from the milk of Serbian donkeys, retails for almost £800 per kilo. It was showcased at the Frome Cheese and Agricultural Show in Somerset earlier this month.

Caroline Hole-Jones, who helps organise the awards, pronounced the Pule – which is the Serbian word for foal – as “absolutely delicious“.

She said: “It is not dissimilar to sheep’s cheeses like [Spanish cheese] Manchego, but richer and stronger.”

The product is made to order and requires more than 25 litres of donkey’s milk to make just one kilo.

“Donkeys don’t give much milk, so that is where the cost comes in,” said Ms Hole-Jones.

And far from baulking at the product, people were clamouring to taste it, she said. Organisers now hope to go one better at next year’s show with an even rarer product – moose cheese, made in the Swedish tundra.

This news story was first published in the current issue of H&H (27 September 2012)

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