Tombea

The Valvestino is a small valley between Lake Idro and Lake Garda, on the Trentino border, under Monte Tombea at 1,950 metres, which gives the cheese its name. It is made from raw milk on the Denai and Piani di Rest meadows at the foot of the mountain, where the hay barns stand with thatch sloping right down to the ground, probably a Lombard form. The valley was reachable only by a hard road, shut by snow for weeks at a time, and stayed under Austria-Hungary until the end of the First World War, though its small trade in butter, cheese, wood and charcoal always ran down to the Garda towns.