The mythical "Pit-matured Cheese" has now been available for at all the cheese counters for some time, and become a well-known product: Fine, but take care!
The sheep's milk cheese lots chosen by our company for the production of Pit-matured Cheese are made solely with milk taken in the months from March to May from sheep on the pastures of the Sibilline mountains in the Provinces of Ascoli Piceno and Macerata.
This is the best period of the year because the sheep are in reproduction (when all the lambs are born) and they their feeding habits have just been changed, from forage to pasture grazing.
The sheep give milk of excellence in this period, precisely because of the quality of their food: this is the moment when all the flavours of the fresh, new succulent mountainside pastures are transferred to the milk.
At the end of August, after maturing for about three months (May-August), the sheep's milk cheese is placed underground, in the Miocene sandstone of Mondaino (Rimini), until 25-26 November.
One single burial per year (compared to three times for other well known pits), in order to allow the pit to lie fallow for the rest of the year, until the following August. Then, after cleansing and sterilising with fire, it will be used again.
Unused for the other nine months of the year, the pit recovers its amazing characteristics of aroma and flavour that are transferred to a cheese with a unique taste and perfume.
Taste it with the unusual "sausage" made with Marches figs or with sweet fig jam, or with mulberry jam or jam made from the "strawberries" of the arbutus tree, or with the typical jams from other parts of Italy.