Just Say Cheese to these Champion Island Curds

When on bike tours in Italy, it’s hard to determine the definitive “big cheese.” When talking about Italian cheeses, a lot needs to be considered because every town in every province in every region has its own whey of processing cow, goat, or sheep’s milk. However, the Italian island cheeses are as good (if not, better than!) as many of the popular northern archetypes. They are considered some of the richest, oldest, and most unique cheeses in the world.

When looking for the best cheese in Sicily and Sardinia next year, here is a list of heavyweights for any season. Be sure to enjoy them in the piazza after your bike ride with a nice glass of Nero d’Avola or Cannonau.

Caciocavallo

As one of the most popular cheeses in Sicily, caciocavallo gets its name from the drying and aging process. This cheese has a flask shape with twine around the neck. It’s often tied with other cheeses and hung “a cavallo” over a wooden stick. Nowhere is it as delicious as in the Ragusano area of southeast Sicily. This small Sicilian province makes remarkable fresh, semi-aged, and 12-month aged cacciocavallo (with a lovely spiciness) under the names cosacavaddu Ibleo or Ragusano DOP.

Provola

Another member of the “”pasta filata”” cheese family (where cheese is stretched using hot water) is a lovely salty provola. In Sicily the provola dei Nebrodi is a popular cheese held in a salt bath to give it various qualities of piquancy. The provoletta sarda is produced all year round in Sardegna from cow’s milk. The fresher version is a mild cheese that goes lovely with a crisp Vermentino di Gallura, where the aged provoletta can be grated and put on pasta at the end of your ride.

Pecorino

You can’t visit Sardinia and not have the island’s sheep cheese. There are many varieties from Sardinian Pecorino, casu axedu (which could be goat or sheep) and the notorious casu marzu—a sheep’s cheese that contains living insect larvae. It has caused a controversy with the European Union but tastes great on Sardinian flatbread (fly swatter sold separately). In Sicily, the Pecorino Siciliano DOP is produced from sheep’s raw milk and bound by lamb rennet. The milk is from free grazing sheep and set into wicker baskets: a practice that has been active on the island for hundreds of years and makes it one of Europe’s oldest cheeses no matter how you cut it!

To learn more about our Sicily bike tours check out:

And, for Sardinia and Corsica bike tours:

{{cta(‘9b8eea0b-ea29-45c3-8511-69ba24d7ed52’)}}