Italy’s cheese exports hit a record high this year, driven by growing global appetite for Grana Padano and Parmigiano Reggiano. Italy is expected to export more than 400 million kilos of cheese for the first time ever in 2017, according to farmers’ association Coldiretti, which represents an increase of 7 percent from last year and 84 percent in the past decade.
 
Perhaps surprisingly, the biggest market for Italian cheese is a nation with its own proud tradition of cheese-mongering: France. The French buy 23 percent of all of Italy’s cheese exports, a figure that has practically doubled in the past ten years.