Another 100% Made in Italy excellence: the Capotempo di Capua is a cheese drunk with Pallagrello Bianco, of very ancient workmanship. The result of careful anthropological research carried out by the owner of the Vigne Chigi farm, the lawyer Giuseppe Chillemi, who registered the trademark.
We are in Campania, surrounded by greenery in a small village near Capua (Pontelatone) at the foot of Monte Friento, in the province of Caserta, where Giuseppe and Laura produce Pallagrello, one of the few in the world to be both black and white berried. An area that has always been strongly suited to viticulture: the soils are clayey with good ventilation, exposure to the sun with the presence of carbonate exotics. The ancient Pallagrello vine was a favorite in the Court of the Bourbons, with citrus notes and a marked sapidity. The other ancient vine is Casavecchia (the last DOP born in Campania), also served at court.
And precisely in the wake of traditions and the link with the past, Giuseppe discovers an ancient recipe for a cheese served at the Court of the Bourbons and forgotten for two centuries: the Capotempo of Capua. There first historical trace dates back to 1796 in the "Reasoned Geographical Dictionary of the Kingdom of Naples" edited by Lorenzo Giustiniani. It was subsequently taken up in the Universal Geographical Dictionary in 1843, with a more careful description.
FIRST online
The Capotempo of Capua is a Semi-hard cow's milk cheese with flowery rind. The cows are fed with farm hays and cereals. Coagulated with liquid calf rennet and the curd is broken roughly after about 40 minutes from inoculation of the rennet, so as to maintain its softness even after prolonged aging (from a minimum of 60 days to a maximum of 150). At the beginning it was consumed only natural. It is put into shape, purging of whey is carried out with grouting for about three hours. After one day the dry salting takes place and then the 60-150 day seasoning begins, then wet with the Pallagrello Bianco wine of Vigne Chigi, based on the size of the caciotta.
A cheese of royal blood, forgotten for a long time, but today the basis of many recipes from Campania, in particular from Capua, such as potatoes au gratin and melted capotempo. But also favored by many chefs, such as Luciano Vigliotti who proposed the Capotempo accompanied by mixed pasta.
