Near Gorga, “Pre-Industrial” Goodness

Push back the plastic strips hanging like colorful spaghetti (or fettuccine!) on the doorway entrance – but they do the trick, keeping out flies – and enter a cheese-lover’s heaven, the Caseificio Amici. Not far from Gorga, tiny Latium region mountain hill town, the Amici family – Giulio and wife Anna – raise three hundred sheep and fifty goats whose rich milk is transformed into ricotta, yogurt and cheeses.

This way to the caseificio

A bandana on his head to hold back dripping sweat, Giulio sat on the steps just outside the family caseificio (cheese factory) the late June afternoon friend Iva and I were there. Giulio was slicing out a pause in a long hot day: after two hours of milking at dawn, he’d hayed all day and was on his way to the barn for two hours of evening milking. Noting his strong ropy hands, I asked him how many years he’d been milking. “Since I was five – so that makes fifty years,” he replied with a grin. But cows, he explained, “my Papa’ had two hundred cows.” His knotted, calloused hands were testament to decades of milking.

Hot and sweaty, Giulio takes a break

Giulio headed to the barn and friend Iva and I chatted with his hefty wife Anna as we purchased yogurt and ricotta (for our breakfast the following day) and sheep’s milk and goats’ milk cheeses. Not easy to make a decision as each one tempted: sheep’s milk cheeses with black peppercorns, a fresh one laced with arugula and another aged in grape leaves flanked aged goats’ milk cheeses. In the pristinely-clean adjacent laboratory, rounds of freshly-made cheeses fill tables and drying racks and a few soak in a tub of whey.

Anna slices us up some cheese with arugula…ahhh!

After she wrapped our purchases, Anna took us over to the barn to see Giulio milking the herds of sheep and goats, crowded in the fences and patiently awaiting their turns at the milking machines.
“So much work, so no vacation for us,” Anna chuckled ruefully. Their son Massimiliano is studying agraria in Perugia “e ha la passione,” Mamma Anna told us proudly, though she knows that there will be changes when Massimiliano joins them on the land, for “his outlook is more industrial.” She shrugged and acquiesced “il future e’ quello.”