APULICA / MEATS AND CURED MEATS
Gentile di Puglia sheep
Slow Food Presidium · Meats and cured meats · Puglia
In brief
- A sheep breed from Daunia and Capitanata, historically tied to transhumance between the Tavoliere in winter and the Molise and Abruzzo mountains in summer. (Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Pecora gentile di Puglia)
- It was prized for its very fine wool, already praised by Latin writers such as Pliny and Columella. (Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Pecora gentile di Puglia)
- Today it is raised mostly on semi-wild pasture; its milk, scarce but fine, suits Canestrato Pugliese cheese. (Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Pecora gentile di Puglia)
History and origin
The Gentile di Puglia is closely bound to its homeland, ancient Daunia and Capitanata, the northern part of Puglia around Foggia. For centuries it was raised through the great transhumance: from October to May on the pastures of the Tavoliere plain, from June to September on the mountain pastures of Molise and Abruzzo.
Flocks moved along the tratturi, ancient grassy tracks already used by the Samnites and then by the Romans; in the fifteenth century the Aragonese turned them into a regulated network, including the famous Tratturo Magno, also called the King's Tratturo, which linked L'Aquila with Foggia. The Gentile became the emblem of this pastoral world, with its rituals and its rural architecture of droving tracks, posts and sheepfolds.
Its fame, however, rested above all on its wool. Already in Roman times Pliny and Columella praised its fineness, and from the fifteenth century its wool, among the finest in the world, was woven into fine fabrics for clothing and home furnishings. The crisis of the wool industry and the end of transhumance later reduced its numbers drastically.
Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Pecora gentile di Puglia · Italia.it — I tratturi del Molise
Area and method of production
A few families still practise transhumance today, but the main farming method is semi-free-range grazing, often on land that grew cereals or pulses in previous years. The breed is disease-resistant and adapts well to the regional climate, qualities that make it a symbol of the area's biodiversity.
The Gentile is raised for wool, meat and milk. Lambs fed on their mothers' milk and pasture have very delicate meat. Milk is scarce, as the breed is not a strong milker, but it is of excellent quality and the ideal raw material for Canestrato Pugliese, the sheep's cheese shaped in rush baskets.
The decline of the flocks is due precisely to these traits: low milk yield, a wool market in crisis and the shift from transhumant to settled farming. The Slow Food Presidium was created to preserve this genetic and cultural heritage.
Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Pecora gentile di Puglia · Qualigeo (Fondazione Qualivita) — Canestrato Pugliese DOP
How to recognise it
The Gentile di Puglia is a medium-sized sheep with a white fleece that yields very high-quality fine wool. Rams carry sturdy horns in a regular spiral, while ewes are often hornless.
It was precisely the wool that made its fortune for centuries. Besides wool, the breed stands out for its disease resistance and its ability to adapt to the local climate, valuable qualities in an animal that for centuries split the year between plain and mountain.
Its milk, scarce but prized, and the delicate meat of its lambs are the two other products the breed brings to the table.
Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Pecora gentile di Puglia
In the kitchen
In the kitchen the Gentile di Puglia is met mainly through two products. The first is lamb, raised on milk and pasture, with very delicate meat.
The second is Canestrato Pugliese, the whole sheep's milk cheese born of transhumance, when it was made from December to May, the months when flocks came down from Abruzzo into Puglia. Young, it is milder and goes with broad beans, pears or raw vegetables; aged, it turns bold and is grated over pasta with meat ragù, such as orecchiette or ziti in the Puglia tradition.
The Gentile's milk, scarce but prized, is considered the ideal raw material for this cheese: tasting a canestrato from Capitanata means rediscovering the flavour of the pastures where the breed was born.
Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Pecora gentile di Puglia · Qualigeo (Fondazione Qualivita) — Canestrato Pugliese DOP
Where to taste it
The Presidium's area is Puglia, and the breed's historic heart is Capitanata: the Tavoliere plain around Foggia, where flocks spent the winter. This is where the transhumance landscape, with its posts and sheepfolds, makes sense.
Those who want to follow the flocks' road can walk the tratturi that climb from the Tavoliere towards the Apennines. The Tratturo Magno reaches Foggia from L'Aquila via Termoli; the Castel di Sangro-Lucera and Pescasseroli-Candela tracks reach other towns of northern Puglia, the latter running for about two hundred kilometres.
At the table, the simplest way to meet the Gentile is to look for Canestrato Pugliese from the province of Foggia, which lies entirely within the PDO production area.
Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Pecora gentile di Puglia · Italia.it — I tratturi del Molise · Qualigeo (Fondazione Qualivita) — Canestrato Pugliese DOP
Protection
- Slow Food Presidium — pecora-gentile-di-puglia (Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Pecora gentile di Puglia)
When
- The sources consulted give no months.