Puglia, Italy
Caseificio Querceta is a family-owned business that has been producing high-quality, organic cheese in Puglia since 1980.
Recommended to us by a friend of the business, we have bought from them for several years - I remember very clearly driving through the rolling Pulignese countryside, dotted with trulli, trying to find them, and pointing at a farm on top of the hill, asking ‘is that Querceta?’It was indeed them.
Querceta is one of many farms that interrupts the Apulian landscape of dry-stone walls, orchards, olive groves, and red earth, however Querceta is set apart from the rest, in our eyes, for their attention to detail, their years-long engagement with organic farming and production, their respect for the environment and the quality of their produce.
Their pastures cover 170 hectares of idyllic Pugliese countryside, with their herd of 500 dairy cows split between red spotted, friesian and alpine brown.
They are a remarkable little organisation who are caring, ambitious, and fighting to preserve traditional cattle breeds and traditional production methods (and on occasion, fighting off the predations of actual wolves…!). On top of all this, they produce all their own energy from solar panels at their site.
"We are proud to carry much of their range of soft, semi-soft, and hard cheeses, including their cow’s milk mozzarella (treccia), ricotta, and their exceptionally rich and creamy burrata."
— Philip Crouch
Caseificio Quercetta cheese
