Jubilee Cheese Festival in Kolan

In Kolan these days, it is not difficult to find cheese. It is harder to find someone who has nothing to say about it. At every turn, someone cuts a slice, shows the color of the rind, explains how long the cheese has been ripened, or simply hands a piece across the table with a brief: “Try it.” And then you try it. First you feel the familiar saltiness, then the full, almost meaty aroma, and then something that is difficult to translate into words, but easy to recognize – the taste of the island. Stone, grass, salt, bora wind, sheep's milk and the hands of the people who make a living with this cheese. It all somehow fits into one bite.

That is what Kolan is like at the end of August, when the Cheese Festival is held. This year is the anniversary, the tenth. And it is not just another summer event where you will eat something homemade, buy a bottle of wine and go home. Over the years, the festival has grown into a kind of gathering around one of the most important flavors of Pag, and this year's edition brought together more than 50 exhibitors - cheesemakers, winemakers, prosciutto makers, olive growers, honey producers, confectioners and other producers. But the numbers are actually the least important here. What's more important is what happens when you stand in front of a stand with Pag cheese.

Cheese is everywhere. In pieces, slices and whole rings. Someone tastes it seriously, almost professionally. Someone else just says it's "excellent" and immediately asks for another piece. Children circle the stands, adults compare cheeses, and conversations very quickly turn from food to sheep, pastures, weather, milk and - of course - whose cheese is the best. That's what's nice about the Cheese Festival: the product here is never separated from the man who made it.

We often know Pag cheese as a finished product. As a beautifully packaged piece of cheese that we will take home or put on our plate. In Kolan, however, you see it in a broader context. Behind it are the Pag sheep, the rocky pastures, the season, milking, milk, cheese making, ripening and years of knowledge passed down within the family. That is why the sentence by the mayor of Kolan, Šime Gligora, that by bowing to the Pag cheese wheel, we are actually bowing to the island, the bora wind, the pastures, the sheep and the people who created it, does not sound like a protocol phrase here. When you are standing in the middle of all this, it is quite easy to understand what he meant.

And then hunger takes its toll. Because the Festival is not just for watching and talking. It is for eating. This year's gastronomic offer included, among other things, pasta prepared in a large cheese wheel and lamb goulash, with prosciutto, liqueurs, cottage cheese cocktails and, of course, more cheese. And it is here that Pag cheese shows how grateful it really is for playing. You can eat it alone, with a piece of bread and a glass of wine. You can pair it with prosciutto or olives. You can let it melt in a warm dish and completely change its character. Or you can simply pick it up and eat it on the spot, which is perhaps the most honest way. No complications. The best moments at events like this rarely come when you sit down at a perfectly set table. They come when you stand with a paper plate in your hand, something is baking around you, someone calls you to try another cheese, and the conversation with a complete stranger begins with the question: "Have you tried this one?"

This year, there was a double celebration. The Cheese Festival reached its tenth edition, while the Association of Pag Cheese Producers celebrates twenty years of work. The event began in 2015 as a one-day event, and today it has grown into a multi-day program that, in addition to gastronomy, includes workshops, exhibitions and professional content. In the meantime, the association has done a job that is perhaps best seen at an event like this: Pag cheese is no longer just an island specialty sold to tourists. It is protected, recognized and positioned as one of the important Croatian gastronomic products. The association achieved a particularly important victory in 2019, when Pag cheese received a designation of origin. But no matter how nice the story of awards, protection and international recognition sounds, in Kolan you quickly return to the basic question: who will produce this cheese in ten, twenty or thirty years? Because without sheep there is no milk. Without milk there is no cheese. And without people who will be involved in sheep farming, there is no whole story.

That is precisely why the professional part of this year's Festival was perhaps more important than the celebration itself. On the eve of the main event in Kolan, the state of Pag cheese production and its future were discussed, and producers, Pag sheep breeders, experts and representatives of institutions joined the discussion. And here the less romantic side of the story was revealed.

According to the data presented at the meeting, sheep milk production on Pag this year decreased by nine percent compared to 2025, while the number of producers fell by as much as 21 percent. In other words, behind all the awards and beautiful photos lies a very concrete challenge: how to make livestock farming and family farm life attractive enough for younger generations to continue to do it. And that is why the title of this year's story is actually quite precise: the future of Pag cheese is indeed the future of Pag.

And after all the talk about the future, production, tradition and protection, the best is getting back to what we came to Kolan for. You stand at the table, take another piece of Pag cheese and realize that this time you're not just tasting it as cheese. You start to recognize what everyone was talking about: its connection to the landscape, the way of life and the people. It's accompanied by a sip of wine. Then a little prosciutto. Then an olive. Then another piece of cheese, because the first one was clearly not enough. Around you, the Festival is slowly filling up with people. You can hear conversations, laughter, invitations from one side of the stand to the other. Someone is taking pictures, someone is buying, someone already knows exactly which cheese they're going to take home. And perhaps that's the best measure of the success of a gastronomic event. Not how much you read on the poster. But how much you wanted to taste again. In Kolan, that answer is quite simple. Another piece, please.

Fotografije: TZ Kolan