Pyrgos chuffed over cheese’s EU recognition

Pyrgos has expressed its delight after the local Halitzia Tillirias cheese was added to the European Union’s Protected Geographical Indications register.

“This opens doors to new opportunities for employment, for small businesses, and for growth in the farming sector, regarding things like the production of milk,” the village mukhtar Nikos Kleanthous told the Cyprus Mail.

He added that following the receipt of EU recognition, the village has been emboldened to seek new funding from the government to subsidise and expand the sector and help economic growth in the region.

The Nicosia Regional Tourism Board (Etap) were also pleased, saying the cheese “is recognised, as it should be, as a quality and unique product directly linked to the geographical area of Tilliria”.

They added that they are “proceeding with the planning of strategic actions to highlight the culinary heritage and sustainable tourism development of the Tilliria region”.

Kleanthous explained that the process to achieve EU recognition had taken around five years, and that the Pyrgos village council had taken the initiative to promote the cheese.

He said they had made contacts with the agriculture ministry before completing relevant studies with the help of the Cyprus University of Technology (Tepak) before the ministry forwarded on the relevant documents and findings to Brussels.

The European Commission had announced their recognition of the cheese earlier in December.

The cheese, which is known as “helik” in Turkish, was described by the European Commission as “a soft to semi-hard white cheese from Cyprus, made from heat-treated fresh goat’s milk, rennet, and salt”.

“It is matured in salted whey for at least 40 days and has a soft to semi-hard and quite crumbly texture with characteristic holes of different sizes and shapes. The cheese has a fresh taste, with a lemony and slightly salty aroma,” they added.

“Due to the characteristic shape of the cheese, its pure white colour, and the irregular holes inside, which give them a rough appearance, like stones polished smooth by the action of seawater, the chunks of Halitzia Tillirias resemble large white pebbles found by the sea.”

Kleanthous told the Cyprus Mail that the cheesemaking technique has been passed down from generation to generation in the Tilliria region, with the cheese being ordinarily made in people’s houses or at independent cheesemaking companies.