This is a little story about a 45-year-old businessman named Seymour Pond who loved one brand of Parmigiano Reggiano so much, he decided to give up his career and become an importer.
It all started in 1996, when Pond, a Maserati enthusiast from New Jersey, traveled to Modena, Italy, to visit the Panini Museo, a collection of seventeen classic Maserati prototypes. Built by Maserati fanatic Umberto Panini, the museum stood on the premises of another one of his passions—an organic dairy farm.
After admiring the cars, Pond stopped to chat with Matteo Panini, Umberto's twenty-six-year-old son and the farm's manager.
"What do you make on this farm?" Pond asked.
"Organic Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese," Panini answered.
"Really? In New York, I eat a pound of Parmesan a week!"
And with that, Panini gave Pond a little taste.
"I had an immediate reaction," Pond now recalls. "I told Matteo, 'This is the best Parmigiano-Reggiano I've ever tasted.'"
Panini explained that the cheese is so good because it's produced on a closed-cycle organic farm. This means that the cows are raised on 100 percent organic crops, which are grown on the farm, and each cow is monitored and catalogued to determine her ideal nutritional requirements and milking times.
From then on, every time Pond traveled to Italy, he would bring home big hunks of Bio Hombre for his epicurean friends, who loved it as much as he did. They even held a series of blind tastings, and Bio Hombre won every time. Pond kept telling Panini that Bio Hombre needed a U.S. importer, but his friend never found one.
Finally, in 2001, when Pond repeated his request once again, Panini answered, "If you're so certain, why don't you become the importer?"
Pond had never considered this, but the idea immediately felt right: "I thought, 'I have a passion for this product--I know I can sell it!'"
So a few years later, Pond and Panini formed Pondini Imports, to bring Bio Hombre to the United States. And since then, the company has expanded to offer coffee, balsamic vinegar and Sardinian nougat. (These all taste even better when eaten in a Maserati.)
Bio Hombre Parmigiano-Reggiano, about $20/pound, available at www.pondini.com and Whole Foods grocery stores nationwide
