PITRUZZELLO
A Labour of Love, Legacy and Family Tradition
family
For hundreds of years the Pitruzzello family herded livestock through the shepherds’ trails and ravines along the hidden bends of the Anapo River.
Four generations of cheesemakers spent many nights by the fire, cradled in stone, surrounded by animals and ancestors past.
Mornings were spent milking the heard and transporting milk 6kms, traversing the trails of Pantalica to the family farm (Mezzaluna) by donkey. Mezzaluna is where the family tradition of hand-crafted cheese-making would then begin.
MEZZALUNA & SORTINO
Mezzaluna was 20 wild hectares where the Pitruzzello’s tended sheep, goats, cows and grew wheat and hay. Life was split between the farm, family and their community.
The nearby village of Sortino is where the family home was. Village life was intimate and humble—carts, mules, barter not money.
You paid in eggs or cheese, gave flour for milling, oil for pressing and your neighbours were kin. It was here where the Pitruzzello's were established as the premier cheesmakers in the region.
Industrialisation
The family legacy came under threat in the 1960s —cheap imports, falling prices, and rising costs brought the collapse of traditional farming.
Industrialisation changed farming in Italy and the Pitruzzello family's way of life. One by one, local families left the village for factories and opportunity in faraway cities.
Sebastiano - the youngest Pitruzzello son and 3rd generation master cheesemaker begged his father to hold on to the farm and their way of life... but unfortunatley it was too late. In 1962 Mezzalun the family farm sold.
LOVE & Legacy
Sebastiano had 2 loves in his life cheese-making and Lucia - but not in that order.
His true love, Lucia was a local girl from the village of Sortino. Sebastiano (19) first asked Lucia (17) to dance at a local village party. Not long after that at the Feast of the Madonna, Sebastiano asked if Lucia was engaged... and the rest is history.
By November that year, Lucia and Sebastiano were secretly engaged, promising to build a life, together, doing what they loved.
Sebastiano may have fell in love with cheese-making long before he ever asked Lucia to dance… but Lucia was, and always would be, his first true love.
Promise & Prosperity
Sebastiano and Lucia committed to a life in Australia which offered a new path to prosperity. Their families, knowing each other well, saw sense and sincerity in their plan to start a new life overseas.
They set sail across the world to Melbourne where they worked hard, saved, dreamed and later married at St John’s, Clifton Hill. Three years on, they began a family—built on courage, sacrifice, and fulfilled a vow made to each other years before under Sicilian stars.
Now settled in a new land the only thing missing piece was a return to the family tradition and legacy of cheese-making.
