Tastes of Cinisi: the “Vacca Cinisara”

It is said that during the spanish period some ships carried on board cows and bulls to organise some bullfights in Sicily: one of these ships wrecked within the area of Falcone Borsellino airport, in Punta Raisi, near to Cinisi, and the surviving animals started wandering in search of pasture lands, climbing over the surrounding mountains.
Over time, this animal changed its characteristics in order to adapt to its new environment, and is therefore referred to as vacca cinisara.
As time passed the cinisara race spread all over the mountains surrounding Palermo.
Until forty years ago, farmers used to be seen selling the milk they had produced the evening before in glass bottles, door to door. From the Cinisara cow’s milk are obtained some typical local cheese, such as scalone palermitano di cinisara, but also caciotta and ricotta cheese. It is the caciocavallo cheese that makes the outmost of this milk’s unique qualities, really fatty and flavour-rich. The parallelepiped of plastic-curd cheese are left to season in fresh rooms on wooden planks but not tied like their Siracusa’s cousins, which are generally bigger and heavier.
After an year ageing, this cheese acquires its typical flavour with notes of citrus, sage and dried hay, leaving a mellow taste in the mouth, with a final slightly sharp taste.
The vacca cinisara is difficult to manage due to its characteristics: it doesn’t like the stable and is regarded to as scarcely profitable because of the poor milk quantity produced; in spite of this the proverb says “the cinisara licks the stone and makes milk”.
Nowadays, after a complex recovering process, Palermo’s Condotta has obtained the prestigious Slow Food recognition for this race and all its products, from caciocavallo to provola cheese obtained from raw milk.
In 2005 a Consortium was founded to safeguard the cinisara bovine meat and the cinisara cow race, but also to promote the production and consumption of the sicilian product by helping the Consortium’s members to grow and cooperate together.
The Operating centre of the Consortium is in Palermo, via Vincenzo Di Marco n.10