Parmesan cheese is one of the best cheese in the world, with mouthwatering taste but the one that you buy at you're local one isn't probably the real one. Most likely it's a counterfeit of the real parmesan cheese, because the actual one costs about $13 per pound, which means it is one of the most expensive cheese ever and it is one of the industries still saving Italy today.
Italy at one point in Europe was the richest country amongst it's European neighbours because of it's banking system it had in medieval times, but recently Italy has been barely surviving and it's economy is slowly going in tatters, but one industry is quite unique to Italy and that is the real Parmesan cheese industry.
It can only be made in a certain part of Italy and it's also a restricted area, the owner of one such company, Nicola Bertnelli, say's the secret to true parmesan cheese lies in the bacteria eaten by the cows over there. These bacteria are actually good bacteria which makes the cheese different from the knock off's and are only found in Emilia Romagna.
According to this video, a single wheel cost's over $1000 and the cows who eat the grasses which contain this bacteria, are able to produced this type of cheese.
But the funny thing is that the counterfeit parmesan cheese industry is worth $100 billion, whilst the real one where the cheese is premium is worth about $2.5 billion, so the next time you go into a store and your cheese costs $3 then you know it's not the real one.
Another thing, which makes the cheese cost so much is that they mature the cheese for at least about a year and then ship it. So the higher maturity rate the cheese has the more expensive you know it's going to be. Some cheese have matured for over 5 years and they have a higher concentration than ones that do not.
It takes about 131 gallons of milk to produced one wheel of cheese, which in my opinion is a lot of fucking milk. Therefore their farms have a lot of cows and they must be producing at least a million gallons of milk per day or week.