About us
We are Rita and Luca, brother and sister, and Paolo, Rita’s husband.
What we all share is a distancing from the family farming world in the first phase of our lives.
Rita was a freelance lawyer, Luca an entrepreneur and Paolo a chemical engineer and manager in the corporate world. We left and chose to return to the farm.
Today we bring the experience and skills acquired in our previous professional paths to the countryside to achieve the goals of Otto Passi farm.
Rita is the manager of the company, Luca is head of breeding while Paolo is head of production.
History
1892
1892 Giovanni Tolu, our great-grandfather, raised his flocks in Fonni, the highest mountain village in Sardinia. He started practising transhumance towards the plain to ensure good pastures for his flocks even during the winter. That’s why he came to the Middle Tirso Valley, where he built a sheepfold to shelter the flocks, practice milking and produce cheeses, before returning to the town on the eve of summer.
1906
In 1906 our grandfather Antonio was born, who followed in the footsteps of his father Giovanni and acquired new lands to enlarge his pastures. He set up strong links with the local communities, which gradually became a second home for him.
1969
Michele, our father, who from a young age showed a strong entrepreneurial spirit, further expanded the company, buying more land and livestock, modernising the buildings and constructing new ones. He was the first in the family to understand that animal welfare goes hand in hand with nutrition. So he purchased modern agricultural means to cultivate the fields in order to produce useful fodder to be integrated in the pasture, diversifying the diet of the sheep. All this allowed him to market his cheeses, both in the Italian peninsula and abroad.
1992
Michele made a bold decision. He sold the flocks and let the land to move with the whole family to the city of Oristano, where he started a new business.
2015
Luca left the family business to devote himself to rearing sheep and continue the work of his ancestors. Together with his father he designed and built a modern farm with new buildings and state-of-the-art equipment for breeding, milking and cultivating the land.
2019
In Sardinia the “milk revolt” arose which aimed to ask for a fair price for sheep’s milk (at the time paid less than 60 cents per litre). Rita, Luca and Paolo decided to set up a company with the aim of transforming their milk and producing dairy and cheese products. Otto Passi came into being.
2021
The first Otto Passi products appeared. Luca’s work in the livestock sector was recognised by AGRIS (Agency of the Sardinia Region for scientific research, experimentation and technological innovation in the agricultural, agro-industrial and forestry sectors) and became one of the points of comparison for the study of new projects on animal welfare.
2021
In 2021 dairy became a part of the Valides project (enhancement and protection of identitarian agri-food production systems of central Sardinia) coordinated by AGRIS for the characterisation and protection of the microbial biodiversity of raw materials to be processed and the finished products.
Otto Passi
Our Cheeses
During the cheese making process we only use natural starters cultures made by us with our own milk, in order to maintain naturally the peculiar aromas and typical flavors of the product.
