Article by Jessica Cani.
Jessica Cani is the founder of the food blog sardegnaquantobasta.com. Her mission is the food and wine disclosure that she fits perfectly with her passions for the food & wine world and for travel, in order to be able to deepen her knowledge at any time of the day and wherever she is.
Here is the LINK that refers to the article written after the visit to the Otto Passi farm.
Below the English translation.
Otto Passi cheeses: story of three young Sardinians and their return to the land
The innovative vision of Luca, Paolo and Rita who with Otto Passi sheep cheeses have combined technology with the pastoral tradition that has accompanied their family for four generations
Go, discover, train and then return. Going back to the origins and how the land raised us, we Sardinians. To what memory gives us every time we sit down to think and proudly remember who we are.
This is the story of Rita and Luca Tolu and Paolo Musu, Rita’s partner, and the reason why I decided to tell it and bring it to Sardegna Quanto Basta is that the contours that outline it are the same ones that make up mine: that of young Sardinians who are trying to transform the physical and political difficulties of an island into an opportunity and a value, guided by the infinite love and attachment to their land.
Otto Passi cheeses: on the way to the future
Eight Steps, like those to get from the milking machine to the production room. It is a concept that reinforces the meaning of authenticity and naturalness which, as Rita and Paolo point out several times while chatting with them, does not mean rejection of innovation, but starting from tradition and what nature offers in order to look forward, change. and innovate. Eight steps to advance, transform, look to the future.
It is with this vision that the Otto Passi cheese company was born.
Pastoralism in Sardinia: the evolution of the Tolu family
Otto Passi is a dairy company that was born in 2019 in Noragugume, about 60km from Oristano, but whose roots are much older and take us back to 1892, when Giovanni Tolu, great-grandfather of Rita and Luca, practiced transhumance from his hometown, Fonni, to the plain of the Tirso Valley, to ensure a less severe winter for his flocks. Here he built a small house, the remains of which still stand.
The same did Antonio, grandfather of Rita and Luca, who also began to build solid relationships with the local communities that allowed him to transform those lands in the Tirso Valley into a second home, despite the enormous difficulties caused by the wars.
It was Michele’s son, father of Rita and Luca, who laid the foundation stone to build a company and continue the family business. His parents pushed him to continue his studies and enroll at university but he had very clear ideas and wanted to continue his father’s profession. “Do you know that in the Sardinian language tolu means upright, straight, so much so that we use the expression abbarra tolu, in the sense remain straight? Well, I think my ancestors really deserved this name, ”Rita tells me. And I, as she relates, think it was deserved by her entire family for the determination that brought them to where they are today.
Michele was the first of the family to think that it was necessary to feed the sheep correctly and that it was not enough to send them to pasture, because this changes over the course of the year and is not always nutritious. This vision gave him the opportunity to make cheese not only for family supplies, but to commercialize it and put it on the national and international market.
A sudden health problem changed things. Michele sold the flock and changed activities because the doctors told him that the exhausting and tiring job he had done up to that moment did not allow him to take care of himself. He moved with his family to Oristano and started a new business in which Luca, his son, also took part while studying at the agricultural institute.
It is Luca who wants a return to the land, although in this case too the family tried to dissuade him. “It was like starting from scratch”, says Rita, “because he had to reconstitute the flock and restart everything also from a bureaucratic point of view, but with the great fortune of making use of the knowledge of generations, as they had been kept by his father” .
The Otto Passi company
Ottopassi is an ambitious project whose protagonist is a company that focuses on technology, dynamism and efficiency. “We are building the buildings necessary to do this”. Luca, like him, his father, for the well-being of the approximately one thousand garments he owns started from the care of food. Ottopassi made use of the advice of a nutritionist who prescribes the diet of the sheep, which still enjoy fresh grass 365 days a year. A sort of dietician who allows the flock to feed itself completely, introducing all the principles it needs to then, logically, also produce a qualitatively better milk.
“Let’s not tell the tale of the sheep that, in Sardinia and throughout the year, have always lived in the wild. It is not possible, we do not have the right climatic and soil conditions. Tradition does not mean folklore but respect for the past with the aim of innovating. My grandfather was also a progressive and if he knew that instead of moving forward we went back to do exactly what he did or what he no longer did, he would not be happy. We think that Sardinians do not want a commercial narrative that confuses tradition with backwardness “.
Tradition as respect, therefore. Respect also for the studies and research carried out in favor of the improvement and greater well-being of the animal and the taste of the product. A research that starts from the breeders themselves and from young and far-sighted people such as Luca, Rita and Paolo. “The pastor” says Rita, “is not ignorant. Such an anachronistic narrative is convenient for industrialists who can thus buy milk at a lower and undignified price, but the shepherd creates, experiments, gets information ”.
It is precisely in the period of the 2019 milk revolt that the Tolu family invests decisively in its project, struck by the events that saw the milk being poured in the streets of Sardinia as a protest for its derisory price.
“We cannot accept that milk is a raw material whose price is decided on the basis of the cost of the finished product, namely pecorino”, Paolo tells me. “And not one of the best pecorino cheeses on the market, but pecorino romano”
The enthusiasm and desire for change that I see in Paolo and Rita’s eyes are those of those who have a passion that burns driven by the innate love for their land and the desire to help make it a place full of culture, also through creation of a product as ancient as cheese.
With their story I go back to 2012, when I took part in the research project of the anthropologist Filippo Zerilli for my degree thesis. The starting theme was pastoralism in Sardinia; what I moved towards was the investigation into the life of a shepherd from Calasetta, Salvatore Verona, who opened the doors of his home and company to me and, at the same time, of the infinite possibilities that the agri-food sector offers me every day to create a tale. The story of those who gave life to Otto Passi recalls that of the young Sardinians who had the ambition and tenacity to believe in the value of a territory and to invest in it, creating opportunities not only for themselves but for the whole society. which is able to grasp its potential.
“Today we can rely on an extension of 200 hectares, divided into small plots, each cultivated in a different way so as to ensure as much variety as possible for the feeding of our sheep, which have different feeding habits and life, and for this they have been organized in groups. Luca’s effort has been recognized at the regional level, so much so that since the beginning of this year he has become an Agris partner for research on animal welfare “.
Rita, a lawyer, takes care of the administrative part, while Paolo, a chemical engineer who worked for 15 years in a multinational food company, in Ireland and Lombardy and then returned to Sardinia, designed the processing plant of the dairy, designed to transform raw milk and respond to the need for constant control of the bacterial load and its uncontamination and has deepened the studies on natural starters cultures and their application on different products “.
Otto Passi cheeses
All Otto Passi cheeses are processed with raw milk and with the use of natural starters cultures, made by Ottopassi with their own milk. They do not contain commercial starter strains, responsible for the flattening of flavors, but they maintain the properties and aromas of the raw material.
The types of sheep’s cheeses that the company offers are the classic pecorino, made with lamb rennet, a pecorino with vegetable rennet, stracchino, ricotta, the flowery crust, the sheep’s casizolu, the sheep’s mozzarella and the pecorino cream.
Sustainability also passes through packaging Otto Passi sheep cheeses are dressed in natural packaging made of vegetable plastic and flakes created with sheep’s wool. The cardboard boxes that contain the cheeses, on the other hand, contain hay in the bottom. Great attention from the raw material to the product on the market to recreate the entire agro-pastoral cycle.