Hello! Today is our last day here in Italy and we had to end it with a tour and tasting of cheese! We woke up, ate some croissants and expresso at the villa and then rode about 30 minutes to the cheese producer. A young man and his wife own 200 sheep and they specialize in pecorino cheese, yogurt and ricotta.

    He showed us around the building where they take the sheep milk to transform into the delicious cheeses and yogurt. The most interesting part of the tour was going into the basement where the cheeses are aged. They had a great system of labeling and knowing which batches of cheese go together. The sheep only graze on the grass in the pasture so they are very natural. He said he doesn’t think that grains and other processed animal feeds are needed to produce healthy sheep, which I thought was informational. 

    We were able to taste the pecorino cheese with some local honey, bread and prosciutto. I bought some to cheese to bring home and I am excited to have my family taste some as well. 

    Something interesting that I took away from this farm is how they advertise to local customers. While we were there and elderly couple drove up to the cheese shop in their four wheeler and bought their cheese for the week. I thought that this type of local community is exactly what Italy is famous for. They don’t advertise on billboards or in papers. Most of them don’t have social media accounts with followers and it’s simply a family business who’s reputation is the most important. If you don’t hear about the shop from a friend or having visited yourself, you don’t know about them. However, these local people are able to get the word spread about their business and they make a living and a profit from it. I really loved how this differed from traditional advertising in America. Stores like Publix advertise on billboards, in papers, on online platforms and tv to get their business and reputation across to their customers. There is nothing wrong with this, just the sense of community and personal touch seems to be left out.

     I have really enjoyed getting to see the differences here and love the small business feel. Afterwards, we went to the town of Panicale and got some lunch. It was very small, so we didn’t really get to shop or walk around the town. After we left, we went back to the villa to prepare for the gala dinner this evening! We leave to go back to the United States tomorrow at 7am! I am very excited!