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Ciminà caciocavallo

Slow Food Presidium · PAT · Cheeses · Calabria

Apulica editorial team · Sources checked:

In brief

History and origin

Ciminà is a small municipality in the Locride, with about seven hundred inhabitants, whose land lies within the Aspromonte National Park. Here, the Slow Food Foundation relates, caciocavallo has been made since time immemorial. This is the edge of the Calabrian Grecìa, the Greek-speaking area centred on the Bovesia, where many place names keep Hellenic roots: the name Ciminà itself is said to come from the Greek kyminà, a place where wild cumin grows in abundance.

The cheese's story also looks further east. Greek colonisation reached the Balkans too, and caciocavallo has a close relative in kaskaval, a stretched-curd cheese still made today from Macedonia to the Aegean islands, whose origin goes back to the nomadic peoples of the steppe.

Today caciocavallo di Ciminà is a Slow Food Presidium and is listed among the traditional agri-food products of Calabria.

Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Caciocavallo di Ciminà · Masaf — Elenco nazionale dei prodotti agroalimentari tradizionali, XXVI revisione (2026)

Area and method of production

The Presidium area includes the municipalities of Ciminà and Antonimina and part of the territories of Platì, Ardore and Sant'Ilario dello Jonio, in the province of Reggio Calabria. The milk is raw cow's milk, sometimes partly goat's milk, and is almost always curdled with natural kid rennet.

The curd, which shepherds call tuma, is broken with a wooden spino until it forms lumps the size of a hazelnut, which are gathered and pressed together to drain the whey. The mass is left to ferment, sometimes for several days; it is then sliced and stretched in boiling water.

They spend about a day in brine and are finally hung to dry astride the traditional pole.

Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Caciocavallo di Ciminà

How to recognise it

The most unusual feature of caciocavallo di Ciminà is its two-headed shape: a small, elongated cheese that, Slow Food notes, is unique in the world of cheese, even though no specialist publication mentions it by that name. Alongside it the classic ovoid shape is also made.

Weights range from 400 grams to three kilos. A few extra weeks of ageing give it intense, lingering scents of mown grass, yellow flowers and hazelnut.

One of the Presidium's aims is precisely to increase the production of larger ovoid cheeses, suited to long ageing, so that the cheese can become known beyond the strictly local market.

Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Caciocavallo di Ciminà

In the kitchen

In Ciminà caciocavallo is usually eaten fresh, often very fresh, within a few days of being made, and it mostly ends up on the grill.

Cheeses left to age for a few weeks become instead a table cheese with scents of meadow and hazelnut, to be enjoyed on its own. This is the direction the Presidium encourages, with larger ovoid cheeses and longer ageing, to give the cheese a wider use than the everyday one of local households.

Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Caciocavallo di Ciminà

Where to taste it

Caciocavallo di Ciminà is best sought in the villages where it is made: Ciminà, Antonimina and the nearby lands of Platì, Ardore and Sant'Ilario dello Jonio, on the Ionian side of the province of Reggio Calabria, between the Locride coast and the heights of the Aspromonte National Park.

The market, Slow Food notes, is still largely local, and the most direct way to taste it is to come this way: the villages of the Calabrian Grecìa and the Locride, with their heritage of names and traditions of Greek origin, lend themselves to an itinerary combining sea and mountains.

At the table it is easy to recognise when it has the two-headed shape, typical of Ciminà.

Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Caciocavallo di Ciminà

Protection

When

Where

Calabria