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A Visit to Caseificio Codispoti (Montecucco)
Antonio and his son Nicola Codispoti work a small
farm and sheep's milk dairy in a shallow, narrow valley in Montecucco, southeast of Montalcino in Tuscany. Their specialty is the local
pecorino, which they make in the basement of their house on a hill above
their family's land. Their property sits in a grove at the end of a long dirt
track, their endeavor announced by a hand-painted sign out on the road.
According to Antonio, who is in his eighties, the recipe for good pecorino is
simple. You raise good sheep on good land, feed them properly with a
combination of forage and grain, milk them regularly and let that milk, with
as little intervention as possible, become great cheese.
We met him one afternoon as he chugged up the hill from his lower pastures on
an old tractor. Nicola had said that his father had gone down the hill to
fetch a newborn lamb. As Antonio made his way up the steep incline, followed
by a shifting column of sheep, one animal in particular kept particularly
close. As the tractor passed, mama sheep bleating and skittery,
we noticed the lamb, hanging by its bound front legs from the back of the machine.
The tractor stopped, Nicola's wife untied the lamb and took it to the barn,
its mother retreated, and we went about our way.
Nicola took us to the small cheese-making facility, three rooms, two for
production and one for aging. He had fifteen wheels resting on boards. The
younger were the color of milk fat, slightly yellow and gave easily to slight
pressure from the thumb. The mature wheels, some as
old as ten months had formed a grey crust and were hard to the touch. We were
told that the production cycle ran from December through August with the
richest cheeses produced in the spring when the grass is new and the fields
are full of flowers.
After touring the cheese-making plant we headed to Nicola's apartment to
taste. Before a crackling fire we sampled young and old. Used to Pecorino Toscano with piquancy, we were surprised at how sweet the
cheese was. Nicola explained, as his father did, that their style was a
fortuitous combination of land, animal and skill.
We had been invited to visit Montecucco by a young Ligurian transplant named Mattia.
Our initial interest had been in tasting the local wines in hopes of finding
something interesting for export. Montecucco is a
sprawling, crescent-shaped collection of low hills in the province of Grossetto, southwest of
Montalcino. Its main variety is Sangiovese but, as is the case in much of Italy, the
non-native Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot are widely used. While there were
some interesting bottles, our survey was unsuccessful. We were lucky however
that Mattia had other interests as well.
--Jim Hutchinson, Operations Manager, Vino and I Trulli
To read more about Caseificio Codispoti, please visit www.saporisemplici.it.
Comments? Jim would love to hear from you. Please email him at jim@dvmimports.com.
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