Girgentana Goat Cheese

Girgentana names both a breed and the cheeses made from it. The animal is unmistakable: a white coat with amber markings on the head and neck, a long beard in both sexes, and horns that grow vertically while twisting around themselves like a corkscrew, reaching sixty or seventy centimetres in adult males. No other Italian goat looks like this.

It is a dairy breed rather than a meat one, but a modest producer: around two litres a day, against three or four times that from a commercial Saanen. What it gives instead is quality. Girgentana milk has a fatty acid profile that makes it far less 'goaty' on the palate than milk from high-yield breeds, and it was historically fed to infants and convalescents for its digestibility.

The cheeses are fresh ones. Tuma is the unsalted curd, eaten within a day or two. Primosale is lightly salted and eaten within a week, sometimes studded with black peppercorns. Ricotta is made from the whey. A small number of wheels are aged one to three months, and that is the whole range.

There is no DOP and there will not be one: the volumes cannot support it. A Slow Food Presidium protects the breed and its products, and in practice it is the only structure holding the remaining farmers together.

Sweet, milky and clean, and startling to anyone who arrives expecting goat cheese to taste like goat. The pungent, slightly barnyard note that defines most chèvre is nearly absent here; what you get instead is warm milk, fresh almond and a faint citrus lift.

Tuma, unsalted and hours old, is the most extreme version: squeaky, elastic, almost sweet, with the texture of very firm fresh mozzarella and almost no flavour beyond milk. It is a cheese you either love immediately or find pointless.

Primosale, lightly salted and a few days old, is the one that makes the case. The salt sharpens the milk without covering it, the paste firms up enough to slice and grill, and the almond note comes forward. With peppercorns it gains heat without losing sweetness.

The ricotta is exceptionally fine-grained and delicate, closer to a fresh whipped curd than to the grainy sheep's ricotta used in Sicilian pastry. Aged wheels, where you find them, develop a mild nuttiness and a thin natural rind, but never the sharpness of an aged French or Spanish goat cheese.

Tuma is eaten the day it is made: sliced, with new olive oil, black pepper and warm bread. Nothing else, and nothing later: it does not keep.

Primosale is the workhorse. Slice it with tomatoes, spring broad beans, or crushed green olives. Grill it: two minutes a side on a dry hot pan gives a browned crust and a firm centre, and it will not collapse the way a lactic-set chèvre does. Put it in the Sicilian orange and fennel salad, where its mildness lets the citrus lead instead of fighting it.

Girgentana ricotta belongs in dishes where ricotta is the point rather than a filler: eaten with a spoon under honey and lemon zest, folded through pasta with broccoli, or baked into a herb tart. For cannoli, Sicilians use sheep's ricotta, which is fatter and holds up better under sugar.

The few aged wheels crumble or grate over cooked vegetables. Like all rennet-set goat cheeses it does not melt smoothly: heat dries it out and splits it, so keep it off direct flame and add it at the end.

Tuma is not a keeping cheese at all: it is bought and eaten within twenty four to forty eight hours, held in the fridge in a closed container under a finger of its own whey. Primosale runs eight to ten days, wrapped in greaseproof paper inside a container that is not airtight, and the water gathering at the bottom is poured off each day. Cling film against the surface speeds up oxidation of the exposed fat. Ricotta goes within two days, covered, and never beside anything aromatic, because it takes up every smell in the fridge.

Semi-aged forms hold a good month in a lightly damp cloth, drying and firming as they go; when the surface dries too far, a cloth wrung out in salted water brings it back. Nothing along this chain rewards freezing except ricotta headed into a cooked dish, which lasts three months and comes out with the fine grain gone entirely. Half an hour out of the fridge before serving changes the taste of every one of them.

The first check is not on the cheese but on the farm. The people keeping Girgentana goats number in the dozens and are known by name, so a counter offering girgentana goat cheese and unable to say which holding it came from is almost certainly selling goat cheese and nothing more. The animal itself is unmistakable, with long corkscrew horns spiralling straight up, and producers put it on their labels for exactly that reason.

On the cheese: tuma and primosale are strikingly white, a milk white rather than a grey one, with a compact paste that is moist without being wet, and the rind on a primosale is barely there. The most useful clue is an absence. That sharp goaty note most people abroad associate with goat cheese is nearly missing here, and what arrives instead is sweet and lactic with a finish of fresh almond, which unsettles anyone expecting a French chèvre. The ricotta is very fine grained and sweet. Price rules out the rest: a goat giving two litres a day cannot make cheap cheese.

Honestly: in the province of Agrigento, or not at all. Tuma lasts two days, primosale about ten, ricotta forty-eight hours. None of them survive export logistics, and a shop outside Sicily selling 'Girgentana goat cheese' is almost certainly selling goat cheese from another breed.

In Sicily, buy directly from the Presidium farms around Agrigento, Naro, Favara, Racalmuto, Camastra and Palma di Montechiaro, or inland in the Sicani mountains around Santo Stefano Quisquina and Bivona. Several take visitors by appointment. Expect EUR 18 to 26 per kilo for primosale at the farm, up to EUR 30 in good shops in Agrigento or Palermo, EUR 12 to 16 for ricotta.

Ask for the farm by name. There are very few producers, and any counter genuinely selling girgentana can tell you whose it is. A seller who cannot is selling generic goat cheese.

One useful price check: below EUR 15 per kilo it is not girgentana. A goat giving two litres a day cannot produce cheap cheese.

The Valley of the Temples at Agrigento is the obvious first stop, and not only for the archaeology. Inside the park, the Giardino della Kolymbethra (an ancient Greek water basin turned citrus garden, now looked after by the FAI) keeps a small flock of Girgentana goats grazing among almond and orange trees. It is the easiest place in the world to see the animal.

The Presidium farms are scattered through the hinterland: Naro, Favara, Racalmuto, Camastra, Palma di Montechiaro, and further inland in the Sicani mountains around Santo Stefano Quisquina and Bivona. Many sell at the gate; some do tastings by arrangement.

In Sciacca and along the coast, the better delicatessens carry primosale, but ask specifically: what is on display is usually mixed-milk cheese.

Go between March and June. The goats have kidded, the milk is flowing, and the interior of the Agrigento province is green for the only stretch of the year.