There are products that tell the story of a land from the very first taste, and others that do so even earlier: through the gesture with which they are made, the material that protects them, and the time they require. Axridda belongs to the latter category. It is a raw sheep’s milk cheese with an uncooked paste, born in Escalaplano, in southeastern Sardinia, and its very name carries the most distinctive mark of its production process: clay. Not an aesthetic detail, but an essential part of its very existence.

Rino Farci has an infectious smile. More than his words, what strikes you is the way he speaks them: simple, direct, free from artifice. We meet him in his hometown of Escalaplano, in Ogliastra, a land of centenarians, inside Sa Centenaria, an ancient house brought back to life by a couple of friends and now open to visitors. Its rooms preserve a sense of enduring time, the same timelessness that seems to run through his story.

On a table set beside the beautiful courtyard of the centuries-old house, the wheels of Axridda are massaged with mastic oil and then coated with clay after undergoing an initial aging phase. From that moment on, the cheese enters a different dimension of time — slower, quieter. “The clay protects it”, says Rino, “but still allows it to breathe”.

What makes Axridda so deeply connected to its place is not only the technique, but the very material from which it takes shape. The clay used comes from the quarries of Escalaplano: a specific kaolin clay that cannot be replaced. When the Slow Food Presidio was established, there was discussion about extending the recognition to neighboring municipalities in order to define a broader production area. But the issue, as Rino explains, was simple: that clay existed there and nowhere else. “The other villages didn’t have it”, he says.

That is why Axridda is not simply produced in Escalaplano: it is possible because Escalaplano exists.

Rino comes from a family of shepherds. Sheep and goats are part of a knowledge that is not learned, but inherited through life itself. For a time, he chose a different path, but eventually returned. “My father worked in the mines, but he never stopped raising animals”. Before him, there was his grandfather, his uncle. It is not a profession one simply takes up again: it is something that remains within you.

Axridda is a practice that has never been interrupted. “The way it was made many years ago is the way it is still made today”, says Rino. First comes the mastic, then the clay: two ancient and essential steps that do more than simply preserve the cheese — they guide it through time. During the aging process, mastic is massaged onto the wheel: it protects it, accompanies it, and helps keep it soft. Only afterward is the clay applied to the rind, shielding the cheese from insects and external elements while still allowing it to breathe. In this simple yet precise sequence lies the continuity of a knowledge that has never been broken.

The sheep live in the wild, never confined to barns. They roam across wide open pastures and give birth outdoors. This is not a backward-looking choice, but a way of inhabiting the natural order of things without forcing it. Everything follows a rhythm that has neither been simplified nor accelerated. It is a system that holds together environment, animals, and human labor — and that continues to exist because someone chooses to remain within it. It is not about repeating the past, but carrying it forward.

Within this balance, each day leaves a different trace. Axridda is never the same. The sheep choose what to eat according to the climate, the season, the light. “It depends on the weather,” says Rino. There are days when they prefer the shrubs of the Mediterranean maquis — mastic, myrtle, strawberry tree — and others when they turn to lighter pastures. The climate changes, the diet changes, the milk changes. And so does the cheese. Each wheel carries within it the day on which it was made. It is not a variation to be corrected, but a difference to be acknowledged. Here, quality is not created afterward; it originates at the source: in the pasture, in the animals’ freedom, in the relationship built over time. In an industrial system, this variability would be considered a flaw. Here, it is the value itself. Because what changes every day is not a defect to eliminate, but the clearest sign that the process is still alive.

Milking is done by hand, every single day. When the flock reaches one hundred and fifty or two hundred animals, it takes around three hours. Rino does everything himself. “We use our senses,” he says. Temperature is felt, consistency is recognized. There are no instruments that can replace presence.

But his work does not begin in the dairy.

It begins much earlier, in the way he looks at the animals. The sheep are not anonymous. “Every animal is different.” He recognizes each one individually, face to face, inside the circular milking pen. For a long time, each sheep even had a name. He still remembers the first sheep his uncle gave him. Her name was Cambullaja, because of her long legs. It is a memory that says much about the relationship that still shapes his farming today: presence, observation, familiarity.

“In the past, shepherds knew every single sheep,” he says. “They could tell which ewe a lamb came from just by looking at it.” Listening to him, we are astonished, yet we like to believe it was truly so because perhaps this is exactly where the distance between two worlds can be measured: one designed to accelerate, and another built to remain in relationship.

Not every wheel can become Axridda. Before being covered in clay, each one must be flawless. “No cracks, no swelling,” says Rino. Every wheel is carefully inspected, because even the smallest imperfection can compromise years of work.

Only then does the clay come into play.

It serves to protect the cheese from insects and external elements, but above all to allow it to mature slowly while continuing to breathe. Before that, however, comes the mastic, which accompanies the aging process and keeps the cheese soft. From that moment onward, the work does not end. It continues. The wheels are followed over time, cared for, reopened, and coated again. They may remain under the clay for months — or even years. “Four months, five, six years,” he says.

The cheese changes slowly. It breathes, loses weight, concentrates. This is neither an immediate nor a linear transformation. It is a process that requires constant attention, but also trust. Because at a certain point, it is no longer about intervening, but about allowing time to do its work.

After witnessing the work, we climb into a Jeep and head toward the grazing lands where the sheep roam. The road becomes rougher, the journey takes time, but once we arrive, everything opens up. The valleys stretch into the distance, the light shifts, and a profound sense of peace settles over the landscape.

The sheepdogs keep watch over the flock and immediately come alive at the sight of Rino. It is there that everything becomes truly clear: quality is not born in the dairy, but much earlier — in the pasture, in the animals’ freedom, in the way they live. Rino watches over the flock and speaks of Axridda as one would speak of something that belongs to one’s own history even before one’s work. “It is something more,” he says. Within it live Escalaplano, his family, and the Sardinian way of doing things without separating them too much from life itself.

For him, the real risk is not that this cheese might disappear. It is that it might change too much. “With mechanization, value is lost.” What disappears is the hand, the time, the relationship.

We take the road again and return toward the centenarian house. The air feels different now, slower, as though something has stayed with us. Lunch is waiting.

And finally, at the table, it arrives too: Axridda.

The rind is opened, the knife enters slowly. Inside, the cheese is alive, compact, filled with aromas that cannot be recreated anywhere else. It is not only flavor: it is the pasture, the mastic, the time that has worked without haste. Rino looks at us and smiles. “Taste it first,” he says. And in that simple gesture, everything becomes clear. This is not a cheese to be explained. It is a cheese to be experienced.