Sardinia: Milk and Cheese, Pastures and Herders
30 Jul 2020
Three million two hundred thousand sheep, twelve thousand eight hundred herders, thirty-three cooperatives. These are the numbers behind the primary sector of the Sardinian economy, to which we dedicated special attention during the last edition of Cheese, when it was going through a particularly difficult phase.
We’ve supported Sardinian herders by telling their story and introducing people to their products. We continue to do it now with some small but meaningful acts, like dedicating a taste workshop at Terra Madre 2020 to the milks and cheeses of Sardinia, to be held physically at Eataly in Turin.
Raw Milk, Raw Paste: Fresa di Ittiri
The protagonists are the herders and pastures of Sardinia, together with their unforgettable cheeses.
Axridda Cheese, made with raw sheep’s milk or both sheep and goat milk, a raw-paste cheese made in Escalaplano (Cagliari province). The milk comes from animals raised on hillside pastures, rich in the essences and typical shrubs of the macchina mediterranea, at an altitude of around 600 meters. The peculiarity of this cheese is its clay coating (the arxidda of the name is the Sardinian word of clay) extracted from a local cave. The cheese will be presented by Rino Farci.
Then there are two historic Slow Food Presidia in Sardinia, presented by Gavinuccio Turra: Osilo Pecorino, with its typical aroma of sheep’s milk cheese – with notes of wool, dry wood, and occasionally, aromatic herbs – buttery and creamy texture, with notes of toasted hazelnuts. It’s accompanied by Shephereds’ Fiore Sardo as presented by Giuseppe Cogusi, which was “the” cheese of the island’s herders, the cheese produced in the greatest quantity, up until when the processing of the milk passed from the herders to the industrialists, and Pecorino Romano became the most commonly produced cheese on the island.
The Taste Workshop
It will be much more than a tasting: it’s a journey around Sardinia, an island with a marvelous historic, gastronomic and environmental heritage that relatively few know about, and which the dynamics of the modern economy do little to promote.
If you are in Italy, but can’t make it to Turin, there is an option to buy a tasting kit and follow the event online. As this option is only available in Italy, the kit is only available on the Italian version of the website.
If you’ll be in Turin itself in October, then you can come to the event in person! Tickets are available now!
by Silvia Ceriani, [email protected]
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