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    Fodor`s Travel: Why the best cheese in Europe comes from Croatia

    Kristin Vuković, author of the forthcoming novel The Cheesemaker’s Daughter, which is set on the island of Pag in Croatia, also wrote this great article about paski sir for Fodor`s Travel.

    Paški sir was sold out in the United States. This is an award-winning, limited-production sheep’s milk cheese crafted on Croatia’s island of Pag, and known as Pag cheese. Since I was already going to a conference in Italy, it made perfect sense to hop over the Adriatic to get some cheese.

    Why would I travel thousands of miles for a piece of dairy heaven? I’ve been obsessed with this moonscape island and its cheese since I covered a cheese festival on Pag in 2011. The singular herbaceous flavor comes from the sheep’s diet of endemic herbs dusted with sea salt, which is spread onto pastures by a hurricane-strength northern wind called the bura. The island’s 35,000 sheep are a local breed, pramenka, and they’re hand-milked during the milking season, which only lasts half the year. All this to say, it’s a pretty special cheese.

    But production is diminishing, explains Šime Gligora, CEO of Sirana Gligora, one of the largest creameries on Pag. Sirana Gligora currently produces 22 tons of Paški sir annually, which sounds like a lot—but 15 years ago, they produced nearly triple that amount.

    Every year, the quantity is going down,” Gligora says. There aren’t as many young people interested in shepherding now–many would rather rent apartments or sell their land. “[Shepherding] is not an easy job to do, especially when you’re dealing with livestock. [The sheep] don’t know when it’s Christmas, Easter, or Sunday—you need to be all the year around them, especially during milking season.”

    Sirana Gligora ages their cheese for a minimum of six months—much longer than the standard, which is a minimum of 60 days for young Paški sir. The extra time clearly pays off: Sirana Gligora’s Paški sir won gold at the 2022 World Cheese Awards in Wales, and they’ve racked up many international awards in the years prior. Paški sir’s limited production makes it a coveted commodity.

    “It’s like when you’re ordering [a] Ferrari—we’re not selling it to anyone, just the one[s] we want to sell it to,” Gligora says. “It’s hard to get. Now, it’s the most expensive Croatian cheese—retail price is around €70 per kilo.”

    Read the full article HERE.

    Photo: Pexels



      

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