Ice cream kings Gelato Messina selling world’s most expensive milk

The cows are happy and that means the milk is delicious enough for Gelato Messina’s world-famous ice cream. Now you can buy it in bottles. But it comes at a cost.

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It has long been the secret ingredient behind their world-famous ice cream and gelato.

Now Sydney dessert pioneers Gelato Messina are wading into the home milk market.

There’s just one catch — at $6 per litre it’s among the most expensive in the world.

In a city that has given rise to the $18 smashed avocado and the $600 steak, Messina Milk is the new contender for ‘most Sydney-esque cult item’.

The milk is $8 per litre at Victor Churchill but only $6 a litre if you buy it at their store.

It’s price tag outranks other boutique milk producers by almost double, with a similar product from How Now dairy in Victoria retailing at $3.60 per litre.

But for its makers, it’s worth every cent.

Stanton and Blinky Koludrovic drinking milk produced by the Gelato Messina ice cream company. Picture: Tim Hunter.

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The reason, said Messina head chef Donato Toce, is because it comes from some of the most blissed-out cows in the country — a small herd of super-chilled jersey cows in the Victoria who are milked just once a day and are fed a steady diet of peas, sorghum, maize, grass and clover.

Regular dairy farm cows, comparatively are milked three times per day and fed a cheaper grain diet.

“Milking once a day means much lower stress levels which means higher fat and protein content in the milk’,” Toce said.

“And our cows are just happier which is never a bad thing, you know.

“Cows are an animal that will let you know how it feels by mooing. Most dairy farms you have cows that are mooing and making a lot of noise if they’re feeling uncomfortable or anxious.

“Our cows walk into the milking sheds almost in silence.

“Some even walk over for head rubs.”

The Gelato Messina milk with 7 per cent fat.

Gelato Messina head chef Donato Toce.

The end result is a slightly yellowy, high protein milk with 7 per cent fat percentage — double that of regular supermarket milk.

Toce said Messina’s boutique product — which is now used in all Messina gelato and milkshakes — is best used in cooking dishes like milk-braised pork or homemade ice cream.

“Or actually just drinking it from the glass is probably the best, in my opinion.”

And the taste, said Victor Churchill’s owner Anthony Puharich, is ‘the purest thing you can imagine’.

“It tastes like pure goodness … is the only way I can put it,” Puharich, who is one of just a handful of stockists of the milk which he sells in glass bottles at his Woollahra butchery, said.

“It tastes like you imagine milk used to taste a long, long time ago.”

The milk is only available at Gelato Messina’s stores in Bondi, Rosebery and Tramsheds in Glebe. It is not available in Victoria.

Originally published as Ice cream kings Gelato Messina selling world’s most expensive milk