Located in the small rural town of Gergei, the Sinnos microcreamery and Domu Antiga guesthouse have hosted Sandor Katz as well as natural cheese workshops with David Asher and Martin Rosberg.  I am delighted to bring Sour Milk School here, collaborating with this project that joins pastoral cheese with experiential culinary tourism and responsible, citizen-led rural revitalization. Details can be found here.

Participants will learn how to make six cheeses through immersive sessions covering the basics of cheesemaking as we take each ingredient (milk, culture, rennet, salt) back to its origins.  The focus is on fresh cheeses that can be made in a home kitchen, working with the microbes indigenous to raw milk to cultivate a sourdough-like culture known as clabber.  Rennet will be made from a lamb abomasum, and a focus on this ingredient and coagulation rounds outs out the discourse on milk microbes and fermentation.  The cheesemaking process is placed in the context of other fermentations such as those involved in bread, wine, beer, and lacto-fermented vegetables such as sauerkraut.  The science and technical instruction is kept light as I ground the teachings through stories of my travels to places with intact dairying traditions.  The livestock, farming practices, and people behind the cheeses will be highlighted as the sources of the knowledge, techniques, and philosophy that I share.

Six hours of daily instruction and discussion will be enriched by the amazing lunches we will share at Domu Antiga, located just down the street from the creamery.  We will get out of the classroom and into the field, visiting the sheep and hearing about the regional agricultural lifeways rooted in sheep pastoralism.  This helps convey the links between cheeses and the food systems from which they spring, contextualizing the instruction in the culinary and cultural setting of the Sardinian countryside.  These workshops are as much about the host family and their lives as it is about my knowledge and that of the students who gather, as we are all enriched by cross-pollination.

The workshop will be taught in English with an interpreter translating into Italian.  The fee is 900 Euros, which includes a light breakfast and full lunch each of the five days.  Lodging is not included, but the team at Sinnos can help participants find a space in town.  Details and information on signing up can be found on the Sinnos website.