Who would have thought that the most expensive cheese in the world would be produced in Serbia? Not only the most expensive but also the rarest, a donkey’s milk cheese whose lowest price per kilogram is as much as one thousand euros!
The recipe is a secret and no one in the world knows it except for its producers. Pule cheese, as it is officially named, is a kind of world phenomenon – many have tried to make it but no one has yet succeeded!
Among the world’s celebrities, members of the British royal family were the first to try it, but this delicacy from Zasavica, a natural park on the border of Mačva and Srem, really got around due to the rumours of a few years ago that Serbian tennis player Novak Đoković decided to buy all the supplies of donkey cheese for his restaurants. The rumours were not true, but they helped this cheese enter the list of the most expensive cheeses in the world and surpass even the Swedish elk milk cheese that reigned supreme for years.
For a piece of donkey cheese packed in a luxuriously designed box, you will need to pay about fifty euros, and since Pule cheese is only produced in Serbia and is not exported, you will have to go to Zasavica to get your piece!
This cheese is made from donkey’s milk and only in one place in Serbia, on a donkey farm in the Zasavica nature reserve where nature is almost untouched. Donkey cheese is white, thick, mild and slightly sweet – unique in its taste. It is served by the gram and it crumbles in the hand. As many as 25 litres of milk are used for its preparation (about five are needed to make cow’s cheese), and since donkeys only produce milk once a year, its price starts to make more sense. When we also add that there is less than one percent milk fat in donkey milk, which is necessary to produce good cheese, it becomes quite clear how difficult it is to make. The effort is enormous because the donkeys are hand-milked three times a day!