Masseria Posticchia Sabelli

The people behind it

The Di Ciommo family has run the Posticchia Sabelli farm and dairy in Lavello since 1955, but its bond with dairy cattle, the website says, goes back further: more than a century of rearing cows and making and selling dairy products. Today the farm is managed by the brothers Aldo and Marcello Di Ciommo, helped by other relatives and staff, and it keeps every stage of the work together: the fields where the fodder grows, the cowsheds, the dairy and the sales.

The company also describes itself as a centre for research and development, intent on improving its production processes and supply-chain checks without abandoning the recipes handed down in the family. The motto that recurs on its pages is “Safe as Mother Nature”. Every day, at first light, the cheesemakers turn the freshly drawn milk into cheese: the moment when the work of the fields and the cowsheds becomes cheese.

The award that recognises the work of the whole family came from the Italian Cheese Awards in the 2020-2021 edition, when Posticchia Sabelli was named Dairy of the Year: one of the special awards the competition's editorial team gives for merit in the dairy sector, and one that concerns the company as a whole rather than a single cheese.

Sources: Home - Masseria Posticchia Sabelli · Azienda - Masseria Posticchia Sabelli · Italian Cheese Awards 2020-2021 — archivio ufficiale

What they make

The farm's dairy makes both fresh and aged cheeses. The fresh ones are mozzarella and ricotta, which the company distributes mainly in the provinces of Potenza, Matera, Barletta-Andria-Trani and Bari, where it can guarantee quick deliveries and therefore cheeses that reach the table as fresh as when they were made. Among the aged cheeses is Caciocavallo Silano PDO, the cheese that carries the farm's work beyond regional and national borders, to foreign markets that, the company says, are increasingly interested in the flavours of the Lucanian tradition.

The website's online shop sells precisely the caciocavalli: Caciocavallo and Caciocavallo Silano PDO. Caciocavallo is the cheese with which Posticchia Sabelli won the aged stretched-curd category at the 2018 Italian Cheese Awards, in the spicy version of Caciocavallo Silano, and with which it returned among the three finalists in the same category in 2019 and 2023.

The farm's burrata, made with the milk of its own cows, has also reached the finals of the same competition: among the finalists in the stretched-curd category in the 2020-2021 edition and again in 2025. The website presents the whole as a range running from the morning's fresh cheeses to those that need time, the result of a slow and natural process, combining handed-down artisan recipes with modern technology for hygiene and food safety.

Sources: Azienda - Masseria Posticchia Sabelli · Shop - Masseria Posticchia Sabelli · Italian Cheese Awards 2018 — archivio ufficiale · Italian Cheese Awards 2019 — archivio ufficiale · Italian Cheese Awards 2020-2021 — archivio ufficiale · Italian Cheese Awards 2023 — archivio ufficiale · Italian Cheese Awards 2025 — archivio ufficiale

Ingredients and territory

Everything starts in the fields. In Lavello the farm cultivates 250 hectares itself, growing a mix of fodder crops selected to feed its cows, and follows every stage from sowing to harvest: producing its own fodder, the company explains, is how it controls the quality of the milk from the very start. The herd numbers more than 2,000 Friesian and Jersey cattle: the first breed known for the quantity of milk it gives, the second for the high fat and protein content of its milk, and the farm raises them together to obtain milk that combines both qualities. For the company, the animals' welfare, with adequate space and a balanced diet, is the precondition for good milk.

The milk is processed straight after milking in the farm's own dairy, so that the supply chain stays short and controlled from fodder to finished cheese.

The farm also works on energy: a 500 kW biogas plant and a 500 kW photovoltaic plant allow it, according to the website, to run entirely on renewable energy, and its carbon footprint is certified to the ISO 14064 standard. The landscape does the rest: the farm lies in the middle Ofanto valley, the river that rises in Campania and flows into the Adriatic, in the province of Potenza, on the border with the provinces of Bari and Foggia.

Sources: Home - Masseria Posticchia Sabelli · Azienda - Masseria Posticchia Sabelli

Recognition

Posticchia Sabelli appears in several editions of the archives of the Italian Cheese Awards, the competition for the best Italian cheeses. In 2018, at the final evening on 13 October at the FICO Eataly World conference centre in Bologna, its spicy Caciocavallo Silano won the aged stretched-curd category, ahead of the other two finalists: the Caciocavallo di Agnone from the Di Nucci dairy and the Caciomolisano from Fattorie del Molise.

In the 2020-2021 edition, whose final evening took place on 13 November 2021 at the Teatro Sociale in Cittadella, in the province of Padua, the company received one of the special awards the editorial team gives for merit in the dairy sector: Dairy of the Year. In the same edition its burrata was among the finalists in the stretched-curd category.

The farm's cheeses have returned several times to the shortlist of three finalists per category that the competition calls nominations: the caciocavallo in the aged stretched-curd category in 2019, the Caciocavallo Silano PDO in the same category in 2023, and the burrata in the stretched-curd category in 2025. It is a steady presence, covering both aged and fresh cheeses, and it describes a farm able to handle both timescales of milk well: the short one of fresh stretched curd and the long one of ageing.

Sources: Italian Cheese Awards 2018 — archivio ufficiale · Italian Cheese Awards 2020-2021 — archivio ufficiale · Italian Cheese Awards 2019 — archivio ufficiale · Italian Cheese Awards 2023 — archivio ufficiale · Italian Cheese Awards 2025 — archivio ufficiale

Going there

The farm is in the Posticchia Sabelli district, in the countryside of Lavello, the Lucanian town in the Ofanto valley on the border with Puglia. For information it can be reached on +39 324 0460517 and at the email address published on its website, which also has a contact form; the caciocavalli can be ordered from the online shop on its website.

The fresh cheeses, mozzarella and ricotta, are instead found in shops in the provinces of Potenza, Matera, Barletta-Andria-Trani and Bari, where the company distributes them with quick deliveries. For anyone crossing northern Basilicata, between Lavello, Melfi and Venosa, or arriving from Puglia along the Ofanto valley, they are the most direct way to taste the farm's milk on the same day it was made into cheese.

Caciocavallo is the cheese to take home: being aged, it travels well, and it lets you compare at the table the spicy version that won in 2018 with the Caciocavallo Silano PDO. On its website the company notes that it makes cheese every day, at first light, with the milk of its own cows and the fodder from its own fields: whoever tastes it knows where every step comes from, from the 250 hectares of the Ofanto valley to the cowsheds of Friesians and Jerseys and the dairy that works the freshly drawn milk.

Sources: Home - Masseria Posticchia Sabelli · Contatti - Masseria Posticchia Sabelli · Shop - Masseria Posticchia Sabelli · Azienda - Masseria Posticchia Sabelli · Italian Cheese Awards 2018 — archivio ufficiale

Products and flavours

The place

Lavello

Lavello: Vulture and agricultural memory. A border town above the Ofanto valley, with transhumance tracks, Daunian tombs and the tools of the wheat cycle.

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Photo: Biagiofg / Wikimedia Commons — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Resized and converted to WebP.

The region

Basilicata