Furmàcc del Féen

Furmàcc, furmai, formai: cheese, in the dialects of the Lombard alpine valleys. The rest of the name is a claim, cheese of the hay, and it says that what the cows ate is what the cheese is. Through the Valtellina and its tributaries, from the Val Chiavenna and Val di Lei west along the Adda to the Stelvio and Livigno east, summer cheese and winter cheese are two different things: in the hundred days on the high rotational pastures the milk goes whole into the grasso d'alpe, known locally under names like Storico Ribelle, while down in the valleys the milk is skimmed for a semi-fat or lean latteria. The making is much the same; the milk is not.