My obsession with the movie Gladiator and my love of cheese were bound to collide (right?). The missing link is a raw sheep’s milk cheese hailing from Kiscoty, Alta., recently named one of Calgary’s “25 Best Things to Eat.” The full-flavoured, tangy and addictive pecorino is made at the Cheesiry by Rhonda Headon who apprenticed in Tuscany, on a little farm near Pienza (a short distance from Montepulciano). The fields across from the farm were the location for the final sequences in the film where Roman General Maximus (Russell Crowe) imagines himself striding through golden fields to meet his family as he lays dying. Almost as importantly, it is an area famous for its pecorino di Pienza, a cheese made from the raw milk of sheep that graze on the flora that grows in the unique clay soil.
Headon, who initially travelled to Tuscany in 2007 as part of her 30th birthday celebration, says that you can walk down the streets in Pienza and smell the cheese. Before her trip, she had never tasted a sheep’s milk cheese, but she became fascinated with the cheese-making process when she discovered a small farm where some of the traditional wheels were being made. Soon after returning, she quit her job and gave up her condo to return to the small farm as an apprentice.
Even with her newly acquired skills Headon never imagined she’d start a cheese business, but with her boyfriend’s (now husband’s) support, she began to make pecorino. She remembers the joy of tasting her early versions and thinking, “wow, this tastes like theirs does.”
To read the rest of the story, please go to: The Globe And Mail
