Within the territory of the Upper Vestina Area, between the provinces of Teramo and Pescara, a cheese unique of its kind is produced, born from the unusual union between sheep — predominantly of the Pagliarola Appenninica breed, traditionally raised in the area and fed on local grasses and hay — and the domestic pig, whose stomach, together with Montonico wine, is used to obtain the rennet required for milk coagulation.

A notarial deed dating from 1500, concerning a commercial transaction, officially records the delivery of a “wheel of pecorino received in Farindola” and specifies the place of origin or exchange as “five miles northwards from there”, in the direction of Arsita. From this attestation derives the present name of the cheese, consequently known as Pecorino di Farindola. Yet it is in a later document of 1504, preserved in the Archivio di Stato di Napoli and concerning the numerazione dei fuochi — the census of households for taxation purposes — drafted during the period of the Spanish Viceroyalty, that the economic importance of pecorino cheese from the Vestina area is first clearly attested. It is described as “highly appreciated” locally and as the principal commodity exchanged in the markets of Penne and Loreto Aprutino, together with evidence of an extensive sheep heritage linked to the broad availability of public pastures, of which Farindola represented the most important and populous centre among those surveyed. This document is also significant for the social structure it reveals, from which derives a production model that remained unchanged for many centuries. In this context, while men spent much of the year engaged in vertical transhumance, flock management and agricultural labour, women were entrusted with the delicate responsibility of cheese production — from milking and cheesemaking to ageing, preservation and sale — making it an almost exclusive competence that later gave rise to the designation “the women’s cheese”, attributed to Vestina cheese because it was transmitted from mother to daughter within the family nucleus.

It is one of antiquity’s most important writers on agriculture, Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella, who, in De Re Rustica, refers to the use of vegetable or alternative animal coagulants — other than lamb rennet — in the production of Apennine cheeses. This authoritative testimony constitutes the scientific basis supporting a concrete link with the survival of the pig-rennet technique in the Vestina area. However, it is not possible to connect it directly to the Caseus Vestinus mentioned by Pliny the Elder, Martial and Apicius, and described as a cheese particularly appreciated by the inhabitants of first-century Rome.

In the hands of Luciana Cianchi and Morena Astolfi, in Roccafinadamo di Penne, the curd is patiently broken into small grains before being pressed into fiscelle, traditional moulds in which it gradually takes its cylindrical shape and passes, over the following days, through further stages of processing. In Contrada Pantane, in Arsita, Fiorenzo Sarto’s sheep graze peacefully around the farm. It is precisely the rich and varied mountain pasture — among bird’s-foot trefoil, luminello and other wild herbs — that today gives the pecorino its distinctive flavour: never excessively sharp, not even after prolonged ageing, which may continue for up to approximately eighteen months and is accompanied by the periodic oiling of the rind in order to protect it from parasites, prevent excessive cracking and regulate its breathing. As the producer Fiorenzo Sarto explains: “Once drying reaches the first waxing stage and the cheese acquires a certain consistency, the true ageing process begins. The first oiling is carried out using homemade oil — olive oil produced at home — and during the warmer period, both oil and vinegar are applied.” This practice continues throughout the entire production area, which still finds its principal driving centre in Farindola.