pecorino

Central and southern Italy, Sicily and Sardinia; sheep's-milk cheese, salty and sharp, with eight separately protected versions including Romano, Sardo, Siciliano, Toscano, di Filiano, Crotonese, di Picinisco and delle Balze Volterrane

Made along transhumance routes where flocks moved seasonally between lowland and mountain pasture; the Pecorino Romano designation now covers Sardinia, Lazio and the province of Grosseto, and between 93 and 96 percent of the milk in it is Sardinian

Pecorino is a cheese made by moving: transhumance drove flocks up to summer pasture and down again, and the cheese is what the milk became on the way. The naming is the part worth sitting with. Pecorino Romano is legally allowed to be made in Sardinia, and almost all of it is, somewhere between 93 and 96 percent of the milk. This is not Sardinia supplying Rome. By specification, Sardinia is Rome. The shepherds are paid at the raw-milk end of that chain, and in February 2019, when the price fell from about 85 to about 60 cents a litre, they blocked the roads and poured the milk away asking for one euro. The cheese carries the city's name in the market and the island's labour in the making, and the protest was about which of those two the price follows.