Latteria Moro

Our company, MORO, was founded in 1930 outside the small ancient Roman town of Oderzo. Nestled in the Venetian countryside, Oderzo has a long tradition as a cattle market town with surrounding villages populated by peasant farmers. Luigi Moro, grandfather of present owner Sergio, and his sons started a dairy farm. They quickly expanded operations, collecting milk from other local farms and sold it to families. In those days, milk was a staple substance for the poor, and Veneto was poor.
Sergio’s father, Omero expanded our business in the period immediately following the Second World War. He enlarged the dairy, creating a dairy factory specializing in the production of dairy products (mainly farmstead cheeses) and opened a store in the historic center of Oderzo. Omero, always reminiscent of the stories told by local farmers, began experimenting with old techniques instilling this passion in his son. One of the tales remembered, reflects the age-old adage: necessity is the mother of all invention. Venetian oral tradition tells of peasant farmers during the First World War hiding their cheese from the raiding Austrian soldiers. As food was scarce, the farmers would stow the forms away in wooden wine barrels filled with marc. Once the cheese was taken out of hiding, it was revealed to be savory and sweetly tinted with wine- a palatal delight! This was one of the many stories passed down to Sergio by his father.
In the 1980’s, Sergio began diversifying our products to meet the demands of the ever more sophisticated tastes of our clients. He began to delve further into our past, bringing back the old rural techniques used by peasant farmers and shepherds in the Veneto for the ripening and aging of cheese. Hands on, Sergio closely follows the step-by-step cheese making process. He is involved in everything from the choice in milk, to monitoring the dairies; applying his knowledge of the organoleptic characteristics of the cheese for eventual affinage. His specialty knowledge in cheese making is used to create the best combinations between the cheese and the ripening agents, like wine, saffron, hay, and pepper. He always keeps in mind our rich countryside traditions, applying them with exacting standards.
The idea of Fior D’Arancio cheese, ‘the orange flower’ was born out of the desire to wed a blue cheese with a sweet dessert wine. We earnestly began our search for the right wine, and out of the local wines, Fior D’Arancio stood out with its yellow coloring, intense citrus aroma and its rich exotic history. The Romans imported yellow Muscat grapes from Mesopotamia and gave them a new home in the volcanic soils on the slopes of the Euganean

Hills in the Veneto. They created a local wine with uncommon characteristics and a unique scent, a perfect agent for a new cheese.
It was now necessary to create the right blue-veined cheese with a balanced texture, and this process was lengthy and laborious. The milk utilized is a mix from the Alpine Brown and the D’Oropa cow. The manufacturing process is partly Sergio’s secret, but what we can reveal is that the cheese is immersed in sweet wine then wrapped in linen clothes so that by process of osmosis, the cheese absorbs the perfume and aroma of the wine. The uniqueness of this cheese stands in its perfect consistency: a tri-fold blend and perfect balance between its creamy texture, the light spiced flavor of the characteristic wine and the added glacé orange peels. All of the cheeses and milk used are rigorously local and in this case, we use pure cows milk with the weight of 2,5 kg.
Our company is the only company in Italy to have the approval for both Orange DOCG and DOC Prosecco. We are proud of this accomplishment, as the certification process in Italy is not simple-the standards are high and difficult to meet. The authorization for DOP, DOC, and DOCGS involves not only the local level farmers cooperatives but also the national level Ministry of Agriculture, and this helps to maintain Made In Italy high quality standards.
Every year, we at MORO develop new cheeses, not all of them are marketed, for reasons of cost or because similar cheeses already exist in the market. We fuse our tradition with innovation and believe that our future lies in collaboration with other valued products. Soon we will be coming out with exciting news, stay tuned!
www.moroformaggi.it