+8 The Cheese of Lovers
The Cheese of Lovers
SASSOCORVARO, Italy – He dips his left hand into the vat of white liquid and brings it up to let the small chunks drip down and bounce against his right. The light coming in from the warehouse windows illuminates the line of scientific symbols tattooed around his arm.
“It’s the chemical process of the sheep’s milk forming to the cheese,” Emilio Spada explains. “It’s like a marriage, two halves coming together and by the end they are completely united, and the love story is complete.”
Emilio Spada is the owner of Cau & Spada, a farm tucked away in the hills above Sassocorvaro. He uses milk from his sheep to create different types of pecorino cheese.
In the 1970s, Spada’s father moved his flocks of sheep from the region of Sardinia to this province of Montefeltro to pursue his dream of cheesemaking in the area. The original house where the family lived on the second floor and the sheep on the first, still stands on the property today.
But Spada is no traditionalist.
“Tradition to me means there is no attempt to experiment and create something new and having too many rules keeps you in a box,” he says. “There are no rules!”
“Tradition is what is in my blood, white just like the color of milk.”
Spada motions to the green hills that roll up and down around the farm, then points to himself.
“It is my responsibility to put all of nature into my cheese,” Spada says. “My sheep turn everything that they encounter and breathe into milk.”
A soft breeze blows through, rustling the olive trees. The ringing of bells signifies that the sheep are near. The sheep are brought in for milking during the afternoon. Three sheep produce the six liters of milk needed for one kilo of cheese.
Spada pauses the milking machine process to milk a sheep himself. He hands back a wine glass to a visitor containing warm, fresh, and frothy milk.
“To have the full experience, there is an order that you must follow. You start with the softest and then follow with the more intense aged ones.”
“Remember the taste of the milk,” he instructs before opening the door to his workspace. Inside there are towers of rounded cheeses, big and small, aged and fresh.
He grabs an assortment of these cheeses and lays them out on a wooden board. He shows off each individual knife that is used for cutting each particular cheese.
“To have the full experience, there is an order that you must follow,” he explains, gesturing towards a bright spongy cut of cheese. “You start with the softest and then follow with the more intense aged ones.”
Indeed, the softest fresco cheese practically melts in the mouth like a kind greeting. But the pecorino degli amanti, a special cheese that is aged in a pit for 100 days, explodes on the taste buds with a sharp smack that is similar to the attentiveness of seeing someone attractive walk by.
Pecorino degli amanti translates as “the cheese of lovers.” The traditional aging process gives birth to formaggio di fossa (cheese of the pit), but Spada refuses to call his cheese that.
“Like every beautiful thing, man ruins it with business,” Spada laments. “The formaggio di fossa was exploited by business man when it was a fad and people grew tired of it as the quality worsened.”
Spada knew he could not sell a formaggio di fossa under that name. Instead he named the cheese after the chapel that is housed in the same building as the cellar-hole where his cheese is aged. This chapel holds relics of St. Valentine, the saint associated with love. The cheese also gets its name from the warm feeling one gets in the stomach after ingesting it, because it has been compared to the same feeling one experiences when he or she is in love.
Looking around, it is hard to believe that this small farm hidden in the hills has managed to make its cheese known throughout Europe and earned its way into the preparation of dishes for prominent figures such as President Obama. It is when one encounters Spada that the reason is made clear.
In Urbino, meanwhile, Raffaello Degusteria wine and cheese shop owner Alberto Carinelli proudly presents every Cau & Spada cheese in his front display.
“Emilio is really the face of Cau & Spada,” Carinelli explains. “I was convinced to sell his cheese after tasting it, but Emilio and his passion are the ones that really sold me.”
Back in the town of Sassocorvaro, Spada leads his visitor to the building where the pecorino degli amanti is buried for 100 days of aging every August to November. The walk to the building that hosts St. Valentine’s chapel is lined with poster blow-ups of black and white wedding photographs showing beaming newlyweds. A water spigot set in a wall bursting with color stops walkers in their path. The spigot is set in between a couple kissing. These romantic elements enforce even more Spada’s naming of the cheese.
“It started as a part time job, but then it was a passion,” Spada explains as he walks. “Passion pushed me to explore new things and the beauty around me ignited curiosity.”
Spada pushes open a door. Dust billows up as he moves around, flicking on lights. He says the building dates from the 10th century. He proudly shows off the pit that stands out in the middle of the cellar floor. It is deep and reaches down several feet into the earth. A metal ladder leads down into the dark abyss.
“I had no idea what I was doing when I started all this,” Spada explains. “I was ignorant and had no formal teaching. I just experimented until I felt that we created a product that tastes like it is a part of us and what people from far away think that Italy is.”
As he closes up the hole and returns to the outside world, Spada once again poetically relays his business philosophy.
“The Earth welcomes us, and we respect her as she respects us, and this is Cau and Spada.”
Translation of interviews and other language assistance by University of Urbino student Lisa Oliva.
Video by Allison Baxter & Liza Moore
