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.
Pule cheese, also known as the world's most expensive cheese, is made from the milk of Balkan donkeys from Serbia. It takes approximately 25 liters of donkey milk to produce just one kilogram of Pule cheese, contributing to its high price tag.
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.
It is so expensive because of its difficulty to produce, and its rarity: there are only about 100 jennies in the landrace of Balkan donkeys that are milked for Pule-making and it takes 25 litres (61⁄2 US gal) of milk to create one kilogram (2 lb 3 oz) of cheese.
Does Pule cheese taste good? Pule cheese is renowned for its unique taste and texture, often described as rich, creamy and slightly nutty. Due to its extended aging process, Pule cheese develops a smooth and velvety texture, making it melt in the mouth.
Cow milk cheeses possess a creamy, buttery & smooth quality, with less fat content than some other milk types. Grassy, sweet, and even earthy flavors can also be inherent to cow's milk. Cows produce about 12-20 gallons a day, making them by far the victors of volume.
In 2018, archeologists from Cairo University and the University of Catania reported the discovery of the oldest known cheese from Egypt. Discovered in the Saqqara necropolis, it is around 3200 years old. Earlier, remains identified as cheese were found in the funeral meal in an Egyptian tomb dating around 2900 BC.
Which cheese is healthiest? Cottage cheese is probably the healthiest cheese, Rizzo says. “It's lower in saturated fat and higher in protein than most other cheese,” she explains.
The Balkan donkey produces the world's most expensive milk, known as "donkey's milk." It is rich in nutrients and offers health benefits like better digestion and skin health. Nakawaza is a Japanese brand producing super-premium cow's milk.
Favorite? Considered to be among the world's top quality cheeses, Parmigiano Reggiano is made with raw, semi-skimmed milk from cows grazing on fresh grass and hay. It has a hard, gritty texture and its flavors range from nutty to robust and slightly piquant, depending on how long the cheese had matured.
Donkey milk is most expensive milk. Although donkey milk is rarely found commercially, it's prized for its numerous health benefits. It's closer to human milk than cow's or goat's milk, so it is less likely to cause allergies.
The cabrales blue cheese of northern Spain earned the title of the world's most expensive cheese after a 2.2kg wheel was sold at auction for €30,000, or $32,374. This equates to roughly $6,675 per lb.
World's most expensive paneer for Rs 80, 000 per kgBut what makes it so expensive is that it's made from donkey's milk, which is the tastiest and most expensive source of cheese in the world. According to Daily Mail, this milk can only be found at Zasavica Nature Reserve, in Serbia.
Pule cheese is considered one of the rarest and world's most expensive cheeses. It's truly a labor of love to hand milk and produce this white and crumbly cheese since it takes 3.5 gallons of donkey milk to make just one pound.
Introduction: My name is Edwin Metz, I am a fair, energetic, helpful, brave, outstanding, nice, helpful person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/GettyImages-591791872-72144d1702b7419cb4e5eed961a11f7a.jpg "The Most Expensive Cheese in the World Doesn’t Come from a Cow, Goat, or Sheep (1)")
