La Dispensa, an old farmer’s house dating back to the 18th century, is located in the Montalbano region in Tuscany, Italy. The country estate of Stefano Spinelli encompasses 17 hectares of olive groves, meadows and woodlands – ideal circumstances for Stefano's dream to come true.
Stefano wanted to establish a sustainable agricultural business where nature is the most crucial and valuable asset of a healthy agriculture. A photovoltaic system, a water treatment system with activated sludge and a chipping plant for reusing vegetal waste are only the start of running a completely sustainable agriculture business.
On his property, Stefano runs a Bed & Breakfast and a restaurant next to his dairy farm and his olive oil mill.
In the restaurant, Stefano provides his visitors with delicious regional food from his own agriculture. The main pillars of his agricultural food production are a dairy farm with his own sheep and an olive mill where he extracts his own olives to extraordinary extra virgin olive oil. The sheep stable is located below the main house of La Dispensa where Stefano’s sheep from the Asaaf breed reside. In the main building of La Dispensa, the fresh sheep milk is processed to delicious sheep cheeses such as Pecorino, Caciotta, Cecco and many more. Nearly all cheese varieties produced at La Dispensa are unique and developed by Stefano and his employees.
Du’ Passi is the name of my cheese brand. It is also a Tuscan expression meaning that something is “very near”or “very close”. When we produce cheese nearly everything that is needed to produce our cheese varieties originates from my own farm. The sheep reside in a stable below our cheese production room and the fresh milk can directly be stored in the refrigerator tank after milking.
Next to direct sales, we serve dishes with our delicious sheep cheese in our restaurant. Everything that is related to our cheese production happens at my farm: from sheep milking over the production and the maturity process in our maturity cave to direct sales or processing in our restaurant. Controlling all production steps of the cheese production allows us to provide our customers with a very high quality sheep cheese.
Stefano Spinelli produces various cheese varieties with the fresh milk of approximately one hundred Assaf sheeps on his small farm in tuscany. His pecorino stagionato reaches maturity three months after production. All stages - from cradle to gate - are executed within a radius of one kilometer from the cheese production facility.
