Clara Díez and a Savel by Airas Moniz
One day I looked at a cheese and my life changed . And I say looked, because even before trying it and realizing that a world of textures, aromas and flavors was hidden behind a simple food , I could sense it in their barks, just by looking at them. Those rough barks when any kind of geotrichum mold develops on them, or that amalgamation of grays when it is the penicillium that inhabits them, or even looking inside any blue cheese , with its caverns that invite you to sneak inside, like Alice in Wonderland when following the rabbit, he goes into the hole.
Each culture has understood milk in a different way, and thus, the so many varieties of cheese in the world , responding to the multiple ways in which each region, or even each individual cheesemaker, has looked at milk and has understood what they could obtain from it, how to transform it, thus opening up a world of infinite possibilities. But that's just the last step: cows, goats or sheep, feeding on the grasses around them , they have first defined what it would be like that milk , linking like this the cheese , irrevocably to its territory, to the production environment, which will be portrayed and framed in the resulting cheese. Cheese, as a portrait of a territory.
Clara Diez cutting a Savel by Airas Moniz
I've learned to see the world from a milky perspective : I better understand the different cultures, the relevance of the geographical peculiarities of each region and how these affect the way in which its inhabitants live, behave, or eat. Talking with their shepherds, I have better understood their history, and I have begun to see the rural environment as the most appropriate setting in which to understand where we come from, where we go , Y what is our relationship with the Earth and with all that it provides us with.
Likewise, cheese has made me travel. I have traveled with him to different parts of the world , and I have delved into different cultures through of its cheese traditions, of its fermentations . I remember one night, drinking fermented milk with members of a Maasai tribe in Africa. Cheese has taken me to the most remote places. Although you don't have to go that far. Each corner of our country is defined by the plurality of its cheeses: from Vigo to Cádiz, passing through Ciudad Real or Valladolid , its rural surroundings are dotted with so many cheesemakers who interpret and define, once again, the territory through their creations.
Cheese Still Life by Airas Moniz
Cheese has also taught me to understand the passage of time, to accept aging, maturation, as a natural process that, always, always, adds nuance and complexity . I have also learned that everything is a matter of taste, and that in most cases, there are no absolute truths, that everything is in the nuances, and that sometimes, the bitter ones, make sense and that well fitted, they add richness and character to our lives.
Cheese is life itself, and my life is cheese. thanks to the cheese.