Biopek - Gibellina (TP) - Sicily

Caseificio Biopek is located in Gibellina Nuova in the province of Trapani, Sicily, one of the homelands of pecorino cheese: the company exclusively processes Sicilian sheep's milk. Biopek was founded in 2000 by Giuseppe Messina, who wanted to offer his customers high-quality pecorino cheese. Giuseppe used to sell local pecorino cheese on the mainland, but the quality was always very inconsistent. He therefore decided to set up his own dairy so that he could control the quality of the products! Now, his sons Andrea and Pietro run the dairy, which is spotlessly clean and extremely well organised, and produce pecorino cheese using only Sicilian milk, collected within a 70 km radius of the farm from 50 small producers (with an average of 250-300 head of sheep each). In Sicily, sheep are raised on pasture during the winter and only return to the barn for milking (done by hand). In the summer, however, they are dried off. The best quality milk is produced until spring. Interesting fact: Biopek processes half of the milk it transforms throughout the year from March to May. The milk is filtered and centrifuged to remove impurities and then pasteurised. Production begins at 7 a.m. and the rest is told by the products: the Sicilian identity of the pecorino cheeses is clear, so much so that the brand name chosen for these products is I Siciliani