When it comes to expensive cheeses, it’s a lot like couture. Really. To make a great cheese is to create something completely singular: incredibly intricate, with the best milk around, plus intense care and lots of time. And that inspires a price tag that might blow your mind… until you get a taste.
I had the chance to taste a couture-level cheese once in northern Spain: El Teyedu, an otherworldly Cabrales cheese aged in a cave in the mountains at an altitude of nearly 4,000 feet. In 2023, a single 4.8-pound wheel of El Teyedu set a Guinness World Record when it sold at auction for 30,000 euros. While the cheese doesn’t usually cost quite that much, it still showed me that you can’t rush–or fake–a good cheese, and that’s worth a lot of money. Just like high fashion.
This is also true for the world’s currently most expensive cheese outside of an auction. That honor goes to pule cheese (or magareći sir), a rare cheese produced in Zasavica Donkey Reserve in west central Serbia. The price? Around $600 a pound. To put this in perspective, a pound of Parmigiano Reggiano costs $15 to $25 per pound and up, depending on the producer and how many months the cheese is aged.
Let’s start with where the milk comes from: not cows, not goats, not sheep, but donkeys. And unlike their fellow milk-producing animals, donkey milk is super rare. Further, the 120 or so Balkan donkeys are a rare and endangered breed, but now protected at Zasavica, one of the last remaining, authentically preserved wetlands in Serbia.
Rare donkeys in a rare environment is just the beginning of what makes pule cheese so special. The cheese is made from 60% donkey milk from the jenny (female), 40% goat milk, rennet, and a very secret recipe. But it takes 25 liters of donkey milk to make 1 kilogram (around 2.2 pounds) of cheese—and a jenny produces only about 1.5 to 2 liters of milk per day. (Compare that to a cow, which can produce up to 60 liters per day.)
Further, milking must be done three times a day by hand, according to Slobodan Simić, founder of the reserve, (the donkeys can’t be machine milked because of their anatomy). After that painstaking gathering of enough donkey milk, the cheese is put into 50-gram molds for 24 hours and aged for a month. That adds up to a lot of time.
Then there’s flavor: Pule’s flavor has been likened to Spain’s hyped manchego, with more richness and intensity and a uniquely soft and crumbly texture. Donkey milk contains 1% fat and 60 times more Vitamin C than cow’s milk–another influence on flavor, creating a nuanced sour tang. Is that a flavor worth paying top dollar for? Perhaps, especially when you consider that the high price is helping to fund the protection of this rare breed of Balkan donkey and its domestic habitat.
Where Can You Buy Pule?
Want to get a taste? You can’t buy pule in a cheese shop, so you’ll need to hop a plane to Belgrade and drive out to Zasavica Donkey Reserve for a firsthand visit. Or hop online and order your own from the reserve. Either way, that couture cheese moment is there to be invested in–and enjoyed.
(or magareći sir), a rare cheese produced in Zasavica Donkey Reserve in west central Serbia. The price? Around $600 a pound. To put this in perspective, a pound of Parmigiano Reggiano costs $15 to $25 per pound and up, depending on the producer and how many months the cheese is aged.
Pule cheese or magareći sir, is a Serbian cheese made from 60% Balkan donkey milk and 40% goat's milk. The cheese is produced in Zasavica Nature Reserve. Pule is reportedly the "world's most expensive cheese", fetching US$1300 per kilogram.
It's not that the cheese possesses highly unusual qualities: It's white with a crumbly texture and a flavor like strong manchego. No expensive ingredients are added during the cheesemaking process. The donkeys milked for the cheese aren't wild, either.
The International Space Station – $150 billion. The International Space Station (ISS) is the most expensive thing in the world now and that costs $150 billion. It is the largest modular space station ever built and operated by NASA for $4 billion annually. Despite its high cost, daily life on the ISS may seem mundane.
The most expensive food in the world is widely considered to be Almas caviar, which is made from the female beluga sturgeon. Almas caviar has multiple qualities that it must meet in order to be deemed authentic. To be deemed Almas caviar, the product must: Come from an albino Iranian beluga sturgeon.
Cow's milk is the most commonly used in cheese making. However, sheep, goat, and buffalo's milk cheeses are also very popular. Each type of milk differs slightly in its fat content, overall composition, and thus each imparts a distinctive flavor.
The casu marzu or casu martzu is a sheep cheese from Sardinia, in Italy. This cheese is famous for being the 'maggot cheese' or 'grub cheese'. At first sight, it doesn't look tasty, it is however widely talked about all over the world.
Goat's milk has lower levels of the milk sugar lactose, making it generally easier to digest for those with lactose intolerance. It also contains A2 casein, a protein that some people find easier to digest than cow's milk, which contains A1 casein.
Some of the healthiest cheeses are feta and goat cheese, which are better for lactose intolerance. Cottage cheese and ricotta have more than 11 grams of muscle-building protein in a single serving. Swiss cheese is naturally lower in sodium, so it is a good option for people with hypertension.
Now-a-days, the consumers' interest in donkey milk is escalating in European countries due to its compositional similarity to human milk, with good tolerability and palatability. Hence, in western countries, donkey dairies are emerging to produce an alternative milk source for human infants.
Rare donkeys in a rare environment is just the beginning of what makes pule cheese so special. The cheese is made from 60% donkey milk from the jenny (female), 40% goat milk, rennet, and a very secret recipe.
It's not just the most expensive cheese, but also one of the rarest of them all. It takes 25 liters of the donkey's milk to make just one kilogram of cheese. It is originally from Siberia but will soon be making its way around the world.
Narrator: Pule donkey cheese is the most expensive cheese in the world. Produced by only one farm in the world, pule will cost you about $600 for a single pound.
A Spanish Cabrales blue cheese has shattered records, commanding an astonishing price of over $32,000 (Rs 26.48 lakh) at a local cheese festival. The wheel of dairy decadence, weighing 2.17 kg, clinched its place in history by securing a new Guinness World Record for the highest price ever paid for cheese.
Donkeys yield only a tiny amount of milk, making it scarce and challenging to produce. The cheese has a unique flavor and is described as delicate and slightly sweet. Additionally, its creamy texture is similar to buffalo mozzarella, but its high demand and high price attract food enthusiasts and connoisseurs.
Donkey milk is one of the most expensive kinds of milk in the world. According to a Krishi Jagran article, the cost of donkey milk varies depending on where you are and how readily available it is.
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