Cheese and wine are a heavenly pairing, and now one Italian factory is just, like, mashing them together. This is Ubriaco, cheese that has been dunked and soaked in wine.
La Casearia Carpenedo in northern Italy has taken to dunking its cheese wheels into red wine, white wine and prosecco as part of the cheese's "refinement process," according to Business Insider.
The cheese wheels are submerged into the wine, sometimes soaking for up to 150 days. Depending on the cheese, the process can take up to 2.5 years because the length of time the cheeses are left to age before and after soaking vary.
La Casearia Carpenedo makes 15 different types of "drunken" cheese, the most popular being "Ubriaco di Raboso." Ubriaco started appearing in 1976, but the process dates back to World War I when farmers would hide their cheese from soldiers in barrels of wine. La Casearia Carpenedo makes over 20,000 wheels of cheese each year.
Though wine-soaked cheese been around for decades, many people are just now finding out about it and can't seem to agree on whether it's a delicacy or repulsive. Reactions ranged from "hello new diet!" to "I just threw up in my mouth."
It might taste intoxicating, but honestly, when the cheese wheel is pulled from the red wine it looks a bit like ground beef. Not exactly appetizing, but maybe we shouldn't judge a book by its cover -- or a cheese wheel by its appearance.