Pietraroja, in the Benevento hills, is the comune tied to this pecorino. Milk for the cheese is meant to come from ewes kept in the production area, taken in a double milking at evening and morning. Those animals are fed on local mountain pasture, with cereals and forages as a complement, so the dairy work begins already on the slope rather than only in the vat.
After about half an hour the curd is broken. Roughly two hours from forming, a medium dry salting is rubbed over the surface. Later the wheels are anointed with olive oil. What takes shape is a sheep cheese whose paste is soft and compact, with eyes that are rare almost to the point of absence: a close, yielding interior rather than a holey one.
Then comes the wait: closed demijohns, darkness, a cool cellar, and at least forty to fifty days. For a given length of ripening, saltiness and heat are said to reach their peak together. Appetite here is not spectacle; it is the promise of a mountain pecorino that has been oiled, salted by hand, and left to settle out of the light.