Sheep-herding predates the Roman Age in Italy's Abruzzo region, and the tangy scent of ewe's milk cheese still rises from local market stalls. To help this ancient profession survive, a local organic co-operative has launched a novel concept: adopt-a-sheep.
An annual contribution of $255 buys “adoption papers,” along with your lamb's childhood photos, a chronicle of shearing, milking, birthing, and a hospitable invitation to visit. (No need to sleep in the pens, there are beds at the agriturismo in Anversa degli Abruzzi.) “Parents” also receive several pounds of the farm's award-winning pecorino and juniper-smoked ricotta cheese, and a pair of virgin wool trekking socks, handy if you plan to follow your new kin to their fennel- and mint-laced grazing fields.
Trend-spotters may call Abruzzo the “new Tuscany,” Italy's next fount of cult wineries and star chefs. And they may be right. But this region has a wilder soul. Isolated for centuries by the jagged Apennines, the land beyond Abruzzo's Adriatic resorts and the fast highway to Rome remains deeply rural. It's a province where hikers can still follow 2,000-year-old shepherds' trails through the hills to medieval citadels, to long-forgotten monasteries, and to meadows so remote only a cowbell's clang disturbs the herb-scented air.
Abruzzo is a tradition-bound land that preserves millennia-old rites such as the Festival of the Serpent Handlers in Cocullo, where snakes writhe around a statue of Saint Domenico on the first Thursday of May, and offers up rustic dishes such as “guitar” pasta, irregular chewy strands pressed through the strings of a chitarra.
Industrial agriculture treads lightly in what's known as Italy's “Green Heart,” where one-third of the land is government-protected and wild apples, pomegranates and dozens of heirloom tomato species including the two-pound “ox heart” flourish beside Abruzzo's acclaimed olives and grapes.
Water from the Verde River, which runs through the mountains of Maiella National Park, is the key to the region's nutty pasta; the reason renowned artisan companies such as Delverde, De Cecco and Cav. Giuseppe Cocco cluster at its springs near Fara San Martino. Fine ingredients are crucial to pasta making, Lorenzo Cocco says. “It's a simple and unchanging process: mix durum wheat with water, give it a shape, and dry it out,” he teases, drastically abridging the ephemeral art his grandfather Giuseppe learned from the area's mastri pastai (pasta masters) in 1916.
Indeed, the Cocco family scoured the countryside for their 1910 wooden winder and old-style bronze plates that extrude a surface rough enough to hold the local chili-spiked sauce on the penne, instead of leaving it on the plate. “Don't mistreat or damage the pasta,” warns Lorenzo, who can strike a militant tone when discussing poor-quality durum wheat, the shortcomings of modern Teflon extruders, or pasta-makers who rush the procedure.
It takes four days for Cocco's tiny output to inch across the factory floor, including several minutes to mix semolina with water when industrial producers combine it in seconds, and a long, low-temperature drying phase that echoes the traditional method of laying strands in the sun. “This is where quality is made,” Lorenzo says. “It's a simple, but very personal product,” so fragile it must be packed by hand. The difference between artisan and industrial pasta will be clear, he adds, if you taste it with parmigiano reggiano cheese and no sauce.
Abruzzo's olive oil is another regional treasure, a commodity so valuable the doors of producer Olivicola Casolana resemble those of a bank vault. High-priced extra-virgin olive oil is big business in these parts, a labour-intensive product whose manufacture only begins with Abruzzo's ideal growing conditions between the Apennines and the Adriatic sea. Olives are a variable and fragile crop, and creating oil that meets the strict standards for an officially sanctified D.O.P. (Denominazione d'Origine Protetta) requires highly experienced eyes and noses.
