I absolutely love cheese and Italians make the freshest cheese I’ve ever had.
We got to watch the production of ricotta cheese, something the small factory was known for and I got to try fresh ricotta. When I say fresh I mean the owner literally scooped the ricotta into its mold and we got to taste it within three minutes of it being ready! An opportunity that my professor Sergio said would and could only ever happen in Italy!
The owners Antonia and Francesco were very nice and after we got to tour the chamber where the cheese is produced we all sat at a huge dining room table and they brought out large baskets of pane (bread), different cheeses for us to sample and no tasting would ever be complete in Italy without 4 bottles of delicious red wine.
Francesco is a shepherd and he’s one of the last shepherds to produce cheeses with raw milk.
We got to sample cow cheese, 6-month-old sheep cheese and the fresh ricotta we watched Francesco produce during our tour.
My personal favorite was the cow cheese. It was a much sharper cheese than the others but it really complimented the wines we drank.
My professor said that one thing Italians recognize as Harmony is eating good cheese complimented with good wine. I could not agree more with his statement!