Pecorino di Farindola and Toumin dal Mel: women’s cheeses

2023-08-04 09:15:12

In the surroundings of Farindola, in the heart of the Gran Sasso d’Italia, for about 2000 years, female hands have been preparing a special pecorino cheese by coagulating the milk with pig rennet, a unique technique of its kind handed down from mother to daughter up to the present day. Tasting Pecorino di Farindola for the first time, I was very surprised to find the name of the woman who had produced it indicated on the label.

Pecorino di Farindola, a Slow Food presidium

The world of cheese as I knew it was mostly masculine: when I joined it 15 years ago as a breeder and cheesemaker, it didn’t take long to realize that most of my interlocutors and colleagues were men, with sporadic exceptions. While remaining a predominantly male environment, in hindsight the female presence is historically, silently, consistent: in many areas of the dairy geography, at the time when economies were based on subsistence or small trade, cheese was a thing for women. While the men took care of the animals and the countryside, the women transformed the milk into cheese in their kitchens, handing down traditions and knowledge. In a certain sense, we can find this type of approach even today, in family-run micro-production realities. Of course, now the kitchens are small dairies and transforming milk is a profession in all respects, with all the responsibilities that follow from producing food for the public.

Thinking about women’s cheeses there is another emblematic story, a story about revolutions, problem-solving and the courage to change. We are at the end of the 19th century in Val Varaita, in the Piedmontese Alps, where the margaritas have always produced butter and great cheeses to be aged with partially skimmed cow’s milk. It seems that at that time the butter market was experiencing a severe crisis and that the margaritas were in difficulty as they were unable to sell all of their product. In this context, two women from a small village tried something revolutionary to solve the problem, in absolute opposition to the local tradition: small soft cheeses made with whole milk, to be eaten in a few days.

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The idea was so popular that their tomini not only spread in the valley, but also prepared in the kitchens of various other women, began to be sold in the important Melle market, becoming popular throughout the area as “Tomini di Melle” or better Toumin dal Mel and changing the fate of the local economy for the next 100 years. These productions not only have the female hand in common, their fate is not dissimilar either. Pecorino di Farindola and Tomino di Melle are both identities for their territory and both risked extinction a few decades ago, due to the progressive abandonment of the countryside. Both have become Slow Food Presidia due to the desire to preserve their existence. In both cases it was precisely the women who carried their knowledge through the generations and saved them in practice from oblivion. Pecorino di Farindola and Toumin dal Mel will be the protagonists of 2 taste workshops at Cheese 2023. To help save them, all you have to do is come to Bra to taste them and get to know them in person.