This is how the island of Pag brings a taste of Croatia to the world

PAŠKI SIR

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PAG: From Croatia’s mainland, most of Pag looks inhospitably grey and rocky, but the island’s lunar-like landscape is key to producing its delicious staple.

Paski sir, the distinctive, hard Pag cheese, as it is known in Croatian, is the highly-prized product of herb-grazing sheep that cling to the rugged terrain in the face of fierce Adriatic winds. “It contains the very essence of this island,” Martina Pernar Skunca, the marketing manager of the oldest cheese factory on Pag, said. Located 40 kilometres northeast of the coastal city of Zadar, the island of Pag hosts around 40,000 woolly locals — about five times its human population. Grazing freely, the fluffy flock feast on various herbs and aromatic plants, including sage, lavender and curry plant, all coated in sea salt whipped up by bora winds — giving the cheese its world-famous flavour, Pernar Skunca from the Paska Sirana cheese factory said. Aged for at least 60 days and often compared to Italian Pecorino Sardo or Spanish Manchego, it boasts a marble texture and savoury flavour that becomes spicier with maturity.