27 occasions to travel in Italy and all over the world, listening the stories of the shepherds and cheese-producers, discovering new pairings.
In Italy
The Italian regions will show their best offering a really tasty tour up and down the country. Starting from the Piedmontese Valle Varaita, with the beautiful and powerful stories of those, who like chef Juri Chiotti, chose to return to the mountains, giving them new prospects for sustainable development and enhancing local cheeses and then moving on to Sardinia, for which sheep’s milk is the symbol of the island culture. Do not miss the areas of the Lazio country sides told through the experience of closed-cycle companies: from grass, to the production of rennet, to the processing of raw milk.
The ricotta cheese
The sheep milk is protagonist of a special event dedicated to the traditional Sicilian pastry: cannoli, cassate and cassatelle…
“Bufale and chocolate” will offer an interesting pairing among seven types of chocolates and as many products made with bufala milk. With the “Il gelato del recupero” you will discover that the cheese remains can be transformed in soft and irresistible ice-creams.
Then are unmissable the Labs hosted in the Banca del Vino in Pollenzo, which put the light on the pairings with the local wines: Parmigiano and Barbaresco or what about alpine pasture cheese and Amarone? And then bufala mozzarella and ricotta with the whites of Piedmont or natural raw milk cheeses with Triple A wines. Then you will find very original the workshop “le Forme del siero”, from which ricottas of all kinds cheese are created, such as ricotta flowers, salted ricottas, baked ones and those seasoned in hay. With “My name is: Cheese” we will explore the world of all those unnamed cheeses, which are very rich in taste: mixed goat cheeses or “formaggelle”, produced with the milk of animals fed with grass or hay. Thanks to “Il latte nelle vene”, instead, we will taste the excellent cheeses prepared by four young producers who carry on their ancient family traditions made of sacrifice and passion.
Abroad
The dairy heritage of the Alps is presented by a great refiner as Hervé Mons and by the French fermiers, who will lead us on a tour among historical cheeses, such as raw milk camembert, the tradition salers and the Rove goat brousse, and all those small-scale producers that resist to the milk multinationals.
On the other hand, beyond the Channel, the Neal’s Yard Dairy will bring us into the world of English cheeses, then we will move to Spain, among Asturias, Galicia and Castile and León, on the route of the Santiago path, we will be involved in a pilgrimage among the milk shapes, food and drinks of the first Slow Food Iberian Community.
But the journey does not end there: in fact crossing the Netherlands we will discover other Slow Food Presidia, for example the Slovakia, where is possible to meet many interesting cheeses, ambassadors of the Ark of Taste, but also typical dishes, desserts, drinks and honeys, expression of uncontaminated environments. We will land than in Ireland and Australia, nations champions of the battle in favour of raw milk and we will stop in Canada for a tasty combination of cheese and gin.
“Farmer to whom?”
Dedicated to young people, these meetings allow you to experience first-hand sustainable production techniques that respect the environment and health, getting involved with many practical activities to discover the life of the shepherd who raises his animals and feeds them with love to obtain an excellent milk, or the ice cream maker who selects quality raw materials to offer a product that can amaze even the most demanding palates, or refiners, who take it care of the cheese shapes even for years, brushing them, turning them over, greasing them and bringing them to the right maturity.