There’s No Way You Can Miss This Giant Cheese Parade

A 400-pound wheel of cheese rolls into Concord next month.

concord cheese parade

Image provided / Photo by REUTERS/Brian Snyder

The largest wheel of Italian cheese in the Western Hemisphere is making its way to Concord.

On December 1, the seventh annual Crucolo Day Parade is scheduled to wind down Main and Walden Streets. Crucolo, for the record, is a mild asiago made from cow’s milk. It hails from a small town in northern Italy, and is always delivered to the Concord Cheese Shop on the first Thursday of December.

The parade begins at 3:30 p.m. when a horse-drawn cart hauls the 400-pound wheel of Crucolo cheese along the route, followed by a brass instrument-bearing marching band, a dance troupe, Miss Crucolo USA, flags, and more. After plenty of cheering and Italian flag-waving, a round of call-and-response speeches are given. Then, the hefty hunk of formaggio is ceremoniously halved and quartered on its raised platform. It’s not a cheese parade without cheese samples, of course, so pieces of cheese are given to the crowd for tasting.

What happens to the gigantic cheese after the parade? It’s sold by the pound at the Cheese Shop. According to a release, it often sells out in less than two weeks.

For more information, see concordcheeseshop.com.

Photo by Andy Ryan

Photo by Andy Ryan