Fiore Sardo

Fiore Sardo is a hard, uncooked-curd cheese made throughout Sardinia from raw whole milk of Sarda ewes, coagulated with lamb rennet paste. Its shape gives it away instantly: two truncated cones joined at the base, with a bulging side, weighing 1.5 to 4 kilos.

Three things set it apart from every other Italian pecorino. The milk is always raw, never pasteurised or thermised, so the pasture's own microflora goes into the ageing room. The rennet is lamb paste, made from the dried abomasum of milk-fed lambs, which carries lipase enzymes that break down milk fat and generate a long, building piquancy. And the first weeks of ripening happen on a cane rack above a hearth, where the wheels dry in the smoke of Mediterranean woods: mastic, strawberry tree, wild olive.

The smoke is not a flavouring. It is the by-product of how shepherds dried cheese inside the pinnetta, the conical branch-and-stone hut of the Sardinian highlands. In a well-made wheel it sits behind the milk, not over it.

Minimum ageing is a little over three months. Wheels intended for grating go past six, and the best shepherd-made ones reach a year or more. Italy recognised it as a traditional cheese in 1955; the EU granted DOP status in 1996.

Sheep first, then embers. The attack is savoury and slightly gamey (lanolin, wool, dry grass) followed by a warm smokiness that reads more like a wood fire in a stone room than like smoked bacon. Underneath there is real sweetness from the raw milk, and a nutty, almost roasted-hazelnut mid-palate.

The piquancy from the lamb rennet arrives late and stays. At six months it is a warmth; at twelve it is a genuine peppery bite that hangs on for a minute after you swallow.

Salt is present but restrained, nothing like Pecorino Romano's blunt saline hit. The texture is hard, dry and flaking, breaking into irregular shards rather than slices, with occasional crunchy crystals in older wheels. It is a cheese that tastes of a place and a fire, and it does not taste like anything made in a stainless-steel vat.

Young wheels, six to eight months, belong on a board: break them into irregular shards with a knife point rather than slicing, and serve with carasau flatbread, olive oil and bitter corbezzolo honey.

Older wheels grate beautifully. Use them on malloreddus with sausage ragù, on fregola, inside culurgiones filling, over bean and chickpea soups. Because the salt is far lower than Pecorino Romano's, you can be generous, and you will need to season the dish separately.

For pesto genovese, the traditional formula is two parts Parmigiano Reggiano to one part Fiore Sardo, both grated into the mortar with the basil, garlic, pine nuts and coarse salt. That combination is what gives real Ligurian pesto its savoury base without turning it salty.

Like every raw-milk pecorino, it hates direct heat: added to a hot pan it strings and then seizes. Take the pan off the flame first, always. And bring it to room temperature before serving: half an hour on the counter doubles the aroma.

This is a low moisture cheese that has already spent months drying, and it goes on doing so. A whole wheel keeps for months in a cool humid cellar at 8 to 14°C, turned now and then. A cut wedge goes in the fridge at 4 to 8°C, wrapped in waxed cheese paper or baking paper with a loose outer layer of foil; cling film pressed onto the rind seals it and makes the surface sweat. Wrapped that way a wedge holds three or four weeks, and the direction of travel is always drier: the cut face sets into a firm skin, the paste hardens inward from the edge and grates more finely as the weeks pass.

With age the white crunchy specks of tyrosine appear through the paste, and in a warm kitchen fat beads out onto the cut surface, both of them ordinary consequences of long maturing. Freezing leaves it crumbly on thawing, so it only really suits cheese destined for the grater. Grated and jarred it dries and cakes within days. The wheel brand and the producer date are the reference.

The shape is unusual enough to identify it across a counter: a squat drum with strongly bulging sides and flat ends, from the wooden moulds it is pressed in, weighing between one and a half and four kilos. The rind is hard and dark, ochre through to near black, the colour coming from weeks of hearth smoke and from rubbing with oil or sheep fat, and DOP wheels carry the consortium brand on the side. The paste is white to pale straw, dense and close, with few holes, and it fractures rather than slices once mature. Raw sheep milk and lamb rennet paste give it the sharp back note.

Abroad it is routinely shelved beside Pecorino Romano, which is also made in Sardinia but comes in a far bigger cylinder with a pale rind, is much saltier and is never smoked. Pecorino Sardo DOP, dolce or maturo, is a separate designation and unsmoked. Spanish Idiazábal is the closest foreign relative, also smoked sheep milk. Reckon on 18 to 28 euro a kilo in Sardinia, £6 to £9 for 200g, $22 to $32 a pound.

In the US, Fiore Sardo is a specialist item rather than a supermarket one. Murray's Cheese, Formaggio Kitchen, Eataly, iGourmet and well-stocked Italian delis carry it, typically at $22 to $34 per pound. Several importers bring in Presidio-level shepherd-made wheels in autumn.

In the UK expect £28 to £45 per kilo from Italian delicatessens, La Fromagerie and online importers; it appears in cheese shops more often than in supermarkets. Genoese pesto enthusiasts are the main reason UK demand exists at all.

Check the shape before anything else: two truncated cones joined at the base. A cylinder is not Fiore Sardo. Look for the DOP wording, the Consorzio mark and, on whole wheels, the numbered casein plate. Where the counter can tell you the production date, take it: the difference between a six-month and a twelve-month wheel is enormous, and neither is wrong.

Gavoi, in the Barbagia highlands below the Gennargentu, is the acknowledged capital: dairies and shepherds there still work raw milk and ripen wheels over the fire. Ovodda, Fonni, Lodine and Ollolai complete the circle.

From September to December, the Autunno in Barbagia circuit opens the courtyards of these villages in rotation. You walk into private houses, see wheels on their racks and taste them beside the fire that smoked them, the single most efficient way to understand what age does to this cheese.

In Nuoro and the surrounding province, restaurants often list Fiore Sardo at several ages on one board. In Ogliastra, around Seulo, Villagrande and Escalaplano, small shepherd production survives and is sold directly at the farm, usually in whole wheels.