Artisanal Cheese Par Excellence

What is the secret recipe for making some of the most celebrated cheeses produced in Italy?   It takes the original landowner’s vision, a lot of grit and tenacity on the part of the family, a sense of community, a passionate commitment, enormous imagination and a well-cared-for flock of sheep.  These are the ingredients that go into making the cheeses of Corzano e Paterno, an estate considered to be creating some of the finest artisanal formaggi today.

From its humble beginnings of production in the farm kitchen 35 years ago, to its all-in-one modern laboratory and dairy in renovated farm buildings, Corzano e Paterno has established itself as an incredible gourmet cheese maker.  With a client list that includes the King of Sweden, Michelin starred Ristorante Enoteca Pinchiorri and The Four Seasons in Florence and Tantris in Munich, Corzano e Paterno is leading the way for boutique style cheesemakers.  They even caught the eye of the late Anthony Bourdain who did a special there for his “No Reservations” series.

Since the late 1980’s, the brain-child of the estate’s cheese sensation is Antonia (Toni) Ballarin, an English Venetian-born creative who met her Swiss husband, Aljoscha Goldschmidt, while touring Italy as a student.  She later went on to marry him and raise their five children on the Tuscan country estate of his Swiss uncle, renowned architect Wendel Gelpke.  Together these last four decades, the Gelpke and Golschmidt families have taken a land of 144 acres and its originally derelict farm buildings and a beginner flock of 50 sheep, to a buzzing farm of over 640 Sardinian sheep, an impressive dairy, a promising wine production, renovated rental guest houses and a tasting room.

The late owner Wendel Gelpke bought the Corzano part of the estate in the 1969 and gradually acquired in 1974 the Paterno Estate whose former owners at various times were the powerful Pitti and Machiavelli families.  His initial 50 or so sheep were purchased to keep the fields manicured and grazed.  The family soon realized, however, that the sort of Sardinian sheep they were tending had to be milked twice a day by hand.  Employing the help of family, his wife Susan and those willing to lend a hand, they began the laborious process of milking and selling the milk to local cheesemakers.  Eventually Wendel tried his hand at making his own pecorino cheese on a vat hanging upon his kitchen fires. 

With her first two young toddlers running around the house in the late 1980s, Toni took it upon herself to find more solutions for the sheep’s milk and began researching how to produce different cheeses by hand. Flanked with the Sardinian sheep and enlisting a local Sicilian mentor, Toni’s apprenticeship began.  Gradually, she learned the process of making the local sheep cheeses of the area such as pecorino and staginato. 

The region was filled with shepherds from Sardinia and Toni found that she had to diversify instead of compete with the locals and looked to nearby Florence as her potential market.  “I wanted to try something new,” Toni explains. “Wendel always encouraged me.”  It was from this mindset that she began experimenting with new types of hand-made cheeses.  Wanting to keep his farm self-sufficient, Wendel went on to have stables constructed and a milking machine purchased and developed the estate’s own cheese producing facility. 

As Toni and Aljoscha’s family grew year by year, so too did the variety of cheeses grow in an organic way.  You can quickly see that the wisdom behind her recipes might be a synthesis between all the cultural influences that surround her:  English background, Dutch-raised husband, Swiss in-laws and Italian culture.  Through trial and error, experimenting with different rennets to change the textures, and finding inspiration from different resources, Toni still uses traditional methods to hand produce 15 types of cheeses, some of the recent ones being vegetarian-friendly.  “Half of them are your standard cheeses, and the other half are for more unique palates,” Toni explains. 

 Gone are the days when the estate could use enthusiast volunteers from their wide clan of family, lodgers and friends, as now the Italian laws have changed. “We have a few specialist interns that come here every year to help out and learn about what we are doing,” Toni explains. “The next generation is seeing the value of what we have all worked so hard to create.”  Many of the family who had moved away for school, university or work obligations are now returning to the estate to raise their own children and to offer their expertise.  One of Wendel’s daughters, Sibilla has returned after years away with her husband and children to offer her well-earned culinary skills to the estate’s hospitality sector.  Another daughter Arianna is the estate’s enologist now head of all the wine production along with Toni’s husband.  Toni’s son Oscar is now back on the farm after obtaining a degree in Biology followed by a course in cheese making, hopefully to follow in his mother’s footsteps.

Still guided by the ethos of sophisticated simplicity that its founder Wendel intended, the vision of Corzano e Paterno has transformed from a romantic ruin into something extremely special.  Now full-size agriturismo sites dot the estate, a former outbuilding has been turned into a food laboratory/dairy for the production of the cheese, a sizeable wine cantina nestles under the main house, and olive oil production is done yearly.  Corzano e Paterno, now hosts daily gastro-tastings and light fare lunches that allow you for a sampling of all of the estate’s goodness.

Enquiring about what is next for Toni, she smiles, “I can’t keep still.  I love the creative process”.