Following is a transcript of the video.
Claudia Romeo: Manchego cheese is made in a part of Spain that is called La Mancha, which is just south of Madrid, and today we’re in Campo de Montiel, which is a region in La Mancha. We’re going to visit La Granja, which is a farm here that’s been doing the cheese for over 200 years. We’re going to learn about its history and making process and find out why it is Spain’s most popular cheese as well as what makes it different from other cheeses in the world that bear the same name.
Evidence of cheesemaking in La Mancha region dates to the Bronze Age. But cheese is not the only thing this region is known for. In the 17th century, novelist Miguel de Cervantes brought the region to fame narrating the adventures of knight-errant “Don Quijote de la Mancha,” which is the second most-translated book in the world, after the Bible. Within the region, manchego cheese is made in the provinces of Toledo, Cuenca, Ciudad Real, and Albacete.
Gabriel Rodríguez: Manchego cheese is very tied into La Mancha. Since it can be remembered, it’s been made here because it’s a region that’s renowned for agriculture and for shepherding. The milk of these sheep has always been used to make the cheese. So the history of the cheese and La Mancha have been interlinked for as long as we can remember.
Claudia: Finca La Granja is a fifth-generation family farm that’s been making the cheese since the 19th century.
Gabriel: Finca La Granja, we know it’s been making cheese since 1830. That’s nearly 200 years of history in producing manchego cheese. We make cheese every day. To make the cheese, we only use milk from our own sheep, which graze in the surrounding fields. We make the cheese with this fresh milk. It doesn’t even have 24 hours of life. It’s a very important factor for us because in using raw milk in the cheese, we bring all the benefits and the identity that’s important to our farming.
Claudia: The dairy makes about 65 wheels of manchego cheese per day. The cheese is made with milk from the previous evening and morning milk that’s fresh.
Gabriel: The process starts with filtering the milk, which we put in the cellar. Then the cheese master plays with time and temperature to curdle the milk. At the precise moment it curdles — it’s allowed to curdle until the optimal point and then the curds are cut very delicately, very slowly. So the cheese master can reach the perfect point in terms of the texture and the size of the curds. It’s then laid out and introduced to the molds by hand, which is really important, as, in the end, it’s the hand of the cheesemaker making the cheese, making each wheel of cheese, one by one.
Claudia: The mold is very important because it is what actually gives the cheese its signature pattern. It’s all printed inside. And then, after being placed into molds, the cheese is placed into a press… and it’s pressed for about four hours. And after these four hours, it’s gonna be moved to brines. Each wheel is labeled with a unique plaque of milk protein. In the past, manchego cheese used to be shaped in these baskets made of esparto grass.
Gabriel: This is the traditional mold farmers used to use to make the cheese. This is called flor, and it’s designed to allow the whey to escape with the farm’s seal here. This is the pleita, and it’s made with woven grass. This reminds me of my grandfather making cheese with these pleitas. What you do with this is you place the flor with the pleita on top, here you put a mold or a piece of cotton material, and this cloth, you’d fill it with the cheese curds. Then they would put the other flor on top. Then they would put them in the presses, on aging boards.
Claudia: After the wheels are taken out of the brines, they are placed in a drying room. As you can see behind me, we have different blocks of cheese. We have, just here on my right, the ones that were made just yesterday, and then, going forward, we have two days ago, three days ago, four days ago, up until one month.
Gabriel: The mold is very important to us. It functions as a sort of environmental contaminant; it’s completely natural. But what it does is it protects the cheese. When the cheese is covered with a mold, like this one, the cold from the rooms affects the cheese in a much slower way. The mold helps ensure the cheese retains moisture, and most importantly, it gives it so much flavor. What I love doing is brushing the spores into the air at the end. What we do when we turn and air the cheeses, we brush off these spores, so this mold — we dust it off into the air, and it goes and colonizes the different cheeses. It goes on to grow and reproduce. But, well, in the end, we believe it’s worth it to get such a natural delicacy like this.
Claudia: Manchego cheese matures for at least two months. Cheese that matures from two to six months is called semicurado, and it becomes curado when the maturation exceeds six months.
Gabriel: What we do then is, when the cheese has sat for two months, we clean off that mold and we coat the rind in a layer of virgin olive oil. This way, we can feed the rind of the cheese and make it a little softer, and we can also slow down the process of the cheese drying out. After that, when the mold grows, it grows with different strains and different occurrences of mold, which will already be available to be brushed off once more. And then they’re ready to be sold.
Claudia: So, next to me is a 5-month-old manchego cheese. This one is semihard, semicurado, they say in Spanish. And we got some slices that Gabriel has got for us. Smells very nice. Throughout my cheese journey I learned to become a fan of raw-milk cheese [laughs], so I actually have high expectation for this one. So nice. It’s very good. I like it. It’s got some, like, tangy aftertaste. I think that is because it’s been aged for more than the two months that is the minimum. It’s very good. You taste the raw milk. You can taste that this comes from sheep’s milk, and it’s not cow’s milk, and it has a different texture as well, in your mouth. And… I like it; it’s somewhere in between crumbly and a bit buttery, so you get both of them, depending on, you know, when you actually bite into it and when you chew it. Again, the fact that this one has matured more than the minimum has made it better.
Despite the fact that the cheese takes its name from the Spanish region where it originated, other Spanish-speaking countries call their cheeses manchego. So what is the difference? When the Spanish conquistadors landed in Mexico, they brought with them the art of cheesemaking, manchego cheese included. Today, Mexican manchego shares very little with its Spanish namesake, as it is made with cow’s milk and is usually matured for a shorter time. But Spanish cheesemakers are not happy to share their cheese’s name with others. Within the EU, Spanish manchego cheese is protected by the Protected Designation of Origin status, which prevents cheeses not from La Mancha from being called manchego. In April 2018, a new trade deal with Mexico granted the EU exclusive rights for 340 products with a geographical indication, but excluded Spanish manchego. So at this stage, the two cheeses coexist, and the row is sure to be continued.