Soft, hard and somewhere in between, the types of pecorino are innumerable and produced in nearly every region of Italy. They’re aged in caves and with cherries and chili peppers, but all have one feature in common — ewes. Pecorino comes from the Italian word for sheep, pecora, which grazed freely in today’s Lazio where the cheese was first fermented in ancient Rome.

The most well-known type of pecorino is Pecorino Romano, which since the 1990s has had a European Union DOP (protected designation of origin) status to define where the cheese is produced. But even if its roots are Roman, today’s Pecorino Romano is overwhelmingly made in Sardinia.