Lined with bakeries and antique shops, the main intersection in the town of Concord is usually quiet and quaint. But for one day each December, it’s transformed: Police cars block off the road. Strollers and bystanders fill the sidewalks and spill into the street.
This huge crowd is here to celebrate a very big wheel of Italian cheese.
“Thank you for coming!” Peter Lovis, the owner of The Concord Cheese Shop, shouts from a platform to a crowd that he estimates is more than 1,000 people strong. “Allow me to introduce the most cheese loving member of the Concord Select Board. We have the honorable Steven Ng.”
Ng takes the stage and unrolls a large scroll.
“I have a proclamation,” he yells. “This wheel of cheese is reportedly the largest wheel of cheese anywhere in the Western Hemisphere.”
It's 400 pounds — about the size of a large truck tire.
“This historic event should not go unrecognized. Therefore, we — the Concord Select Board — hereby proclaim Crucolo Day in the town of Concord.”
Ng steps back to trumpet flourishes and cheers from the crowd.
This little but loud tradition started back in 2009 when Lovis was getting his cheese shop ready for the holidays. He called his supplier and told him he wanted lots of crucolo — a semi-soft, creamy cheese from Italy. Lovis estimated he needed maybe 25 wheels, each one about 30 pounds.
As Lovis remembers, the supplier responded that it had a 400 pounder.
“I thought to myself, ‘Well, 400 pounds. That’s a big piece of cheese. That’s probably the biggest piece of cheese I’ve managed in the last 40 years,'" he explains. "Sure! I’ll buy a 400 pound wheel of cheese. Why not?”
When the wheel arrived, Lovis decided a celebration was in order. “Something that enormous deserves some sort of celebration.”
There was a jazz trio, and people crowded into the store.
“Everybody had a great time,” Lovis remembers. “So the next year we did it down the sidewalk with a red carpet and rose petals.”
The celebration has grown every year since.
On the platform, Lovis ceremonially cuts the cheese. Some of it is sliced for onlookers to sample. The rest is stacked high so the crowd can take pictures with the tower of cheese.
“Is it the best cheese ever?” Jessica Callow asks her four-year-old son, Graeme. “Yeah!” he replies.
The four-year-old says the reason they’re here is simple: “Because we wanted to see what was going on.”
Justin Kopaz, who works at the Concord Cheese Shop, says the tradition is about more than spectacle or even cheese: “It’s just the way people come together for something.”
Kopaz stands in the middle of everyone, shaving samples off a large wedge and chatting with grandparents, teenagers and young kids that run up to him.
“How much do you weigh?” he asks one young girl.
“Um, about 60 pounds,” she answers.
“This weighs about 100 pounds. So this piece of cheese weighs more than you do,” Kopaz tells hers.
Her reaction is immediate: “Oh my gosh! That’s crazy.”
And with that, the young girl runs off with a few slices of crucolo in her hand.
And Kopaz returns to his usual job slicing cheese. The only difference is, on this day, the whole town has come together to celebrate his work.
