CHICAGO — "You really have to taste the cheese, not just chew and swallow," Dennis Panozzo tells passersby who stop to sample his cheese. "You have to let the cheese melt in your mouth to let the herbal taste of a good cheese get to the sides of your tongue, like swishing a fine wine in your mouth to taste the fruit."

It's a message that Panozzo, a cheese importer, tells everyone from cheese buyers at the International Dairy-Deli-Bakery Show to consumers at an Italian street fair in the Bronx to the rich and famous who shop at the Brentwood, Calif., Whole Foods. Panozzo loves cheese, particularly Monti Trentini Asiago, and he wants those around him to know just how they can best appreciate it.

Panozzo grew up in Chicagoland, and though this Italian-American likes fine food, his career focus — up until recently — was in high voltage electrical equipment for industrial and railway companies. But after dreaming of making Monti Trentini a well-known name among U.S. consumers, the high voltage equipment business now takes up only about 10 percent of his time. The rest of the time, Panozzo and his wife, Dianne, travel to Italy and across the United States, spreading the word about their favorite cheese.

Monti Trentini is a brand of Asiago produced on the plateau of Asiago, Italy, by members of the Finco family, who combine both modern and traditional measures to make these cheeses. The plant where the cheese is made has an ISO 9002 certification, the international quality control standard. Still steeped in tradition, though, are how the cows that produce the milk for the cheese are handled and how the cheese is made.

An example of this is the annual "transumanza." Translated as "over the earth," the transumanza is a two-day trek of cows down from the mountains around Asiago in September to the valleys and plains below in preparation for the snowy winter ahead. Though most dairy farmers these days use trucks as a matter of practicality, the Finco family uses about 150 cows to reenact the procession.

Panozzo describes the event as part cattle roundup, part camp-out and part county fair. Following tradition, most of the cows have cowbells hung around their necks, creating a sound that can't be missed, Panozzo says. In addition, the lead cow is adorned with a small Christmas tree attached to her shoulders like a crown.

The event makes for great visuals for Panozzo, who began importing Monti Trentini Asiago into the United States in late 1999 after deciding that spreading the word about this cheese was to be his mission.

It might seem a leap to go from selling transformers to cheese, but for Panozzo, selling Monti Trentini is a way to get back to his roots, spend more time in Italy and enjoy the things very important to him. Transformers and cheese differ greatly from one another — "transformers don't get moldy," he says — but Italian cheese has always been part of his heritage.

When Panozzo was 15, at his father's insistence he made his first trip to the Asiago region to learn about his culture and to see family, including his grandmother. Though as a teen from the big city he was at first overwhelmed by the completely different way of life there, Panozzo quickly developed an appreciation for the slow approach to day-to-day living in this mountainous part of Italy where cows graze quietly on the hillside.

That appreciation led him on several trips back to Italy, but it wasn't until 1999 that Panozzo decided to pursue his present business. He was visiting an Einstein Bros. Bagels shop in Chicago when it struck him that consumers were asking for Asiago bagels by name.

His thoughts then turned to the first time he tasted Italian Asiago made with milk from cows grazing in the mountains. Soon, he was on his way back to Italy to determine how he could bring some of that cheese home with him.

"I felt like it was a calling," he says, looking back on that first trip to find just the right Italian Asiago. "I've come to know the people and the area well over all these years."

Once in Asiago, Panozzo conducted his own focus group of sorts, asking 20 people whom he didn't know what brand of Asiago they bought. Fourteen out of 20 responded, "Monti Trentini," and within days Panozzo was meeting with Gianfranco and Fiorenzo Finco to discuss importing their cheese and building the Monti Trentini brand in the United States.

Without an importer's license, Panozzo found importing the Asiago to be an expensive proposition.

"I started importing the cheese myself in Chicago, airshipping it from Italy," he says, noting that he paid $1 per pound because he didn't hold an importer's license and $1 per pound for the airfreight.

With no knowledge of the food business other than his love and enthusiasm for it, Panozzo founded Asiago Imports Ltd., printed up information cards and began peddling the cheese to specialty food stores, focusing on Whole Foods stores in the Midwest. Several cheese buyers for the stores agreed to meet with him, and soon they were saying they would switch from the imported Asiago they were already carrying to Monti Trentini.

It didn't take long for demand to grow to the point that Panozzo couldn't keep up. He knew he needed an importer who not only held cheese import licenses but who also believed in the brand.

"Lots of people were interested in imported Asiago but no one wanted to build a brand name," Panozzo says.

No one, that is, except Advantage International Foods, Fairfield, N.J., which has been importing the product for more than a year now.

Richard Kessler, vice president, sales and marketing, Advantage International Foods, says that he was impressed with Monti Trentini particularly because he'd been looking for an Asiago to import and found that many were lacking in taste complexity while Monti Trentini had a distinctive flavor. Promoting the cheese as a brand also was of interest to Advantage.

"We saw it as something where we could nurture it and develop some consumer pull-through," says Kessler.

Kessler and Panozzo work closely together in the development of the brand in the United States, with Panozzo serving as the U.S. agent and direct liaison to the Finco family. Kessler calls Panozzo a "great advocate" for Asiago, and says that he makes many of the initial sales calls.

Panozzo also does sampling at shows and in stores on a regular basis. Sometimes he meets the rich and famous and shares with them his delight in Asiago as he once did at the Whole Foods in Brentwood, Calif., where he walked Brooke Shields and Gwyneth Paltrow through the intricacies of tasting the cheese. Asiago isn't just Asiago, even when it's Monti Trentini Asiago, according to Panozzo.

In fact, two different types of Monti Trentini Asiago are imported: Fresco, made from whole cow's milk and aged 30-40 days, and the aged varieties which are Mezzano, made with partially-skimmed milk and aged for six months, and Vecchio, made with partially-skimmed milk and aged for one year. Fresco has a mild taste and a semi-soft texture. Mezzano has a mature creamy taste and a firm texture, and Vecchio, with its dense texture, is suitable for grating and has a rich and complex flavor. The region where the cheese is produced is an official production area for Asiago as designated by the Consorzio Tutela Regulatory Board. Asiago is the only cheese in Italy having two varieties recognized with Protected Designation of Origin (DOP), and when he samples cheese at stores, Panozzo spends a lot of time discussing the differences between U.S.-produced Asiago and Italian-produced Asiago.

Panozzo also stresses the importance of sampling the cheese with complimentary foods. For example, the smooth texture of Fresco goes perfectly with pears while Vecchio might be best enjoyed with apples and figs. He recommends sampling a piece of the cheese, chewing it until the taste fills one's mouth, and then eating a piece of the accompanying fruit to "cleanse the palate."

As they learned how to taste the cheese, Panozzo says, the cheese experience was a hit with Shields and Paltrow.

Although Panozzo loves to teach people to pair the cheese with other foods, sometimes those education attempts aren't always successful. Still, that doesn't mean people don't like the cheese. At an Italian street fair in the Bronx this summer, Panozzo tried to sell plates of Asiago and fruit. When the plates didn't move very quickly because people didn't want to carry them around, he went to Plan B, putting all of the cut pieces of cheese in bags and selling them. They went like wildfire.

The amount of Monti Trentini being imported is growing all of the time, Panozzo says, noting that it's still far from his goal. As the business grows, Panozzo also hopes to begin importing other cheeses from the region including Grana Padana, Provolone and cheese with black truffles.

CMN