What Italian cheese from the alpine regions has a nutty flavor and is used in fondue? Fontina is the answer. It is a cow’s-milk cheese associated especially with Italy’s Aosta Valley, in the Alps, where it has been produced for centuries. Its creamy, savoury flavour becomes more distinctly nutty as the cheese ages.
Fontina is valued in cooking because it melts smoothly. Young Fontina is soft enough for fonduta alla valdostana, the Aosta Valley’s traditional fondue-style dish. That preparation commonly combines the cheese with milk, eggs, and sometimes truffles. Mature Fontina becomes firmer but still melts effectively.
The original Italian cheese has a natural tan-to-orange rind, a pale interior, and small holes called eyes. Aosta Valley Fontina has protected designation of origin status in the European Union, with production rules covering the milk and cheesemaking process.
The name can cause confusion because Fontina-style cheeses are also made outside Italy, including in the United States, Denmark, Sweden, France, Canada, and Argentina. For a quiz asking specifically for the Italian Alpine cheese, however, Fontina is the standard and canonical answer.