Cheese is our country
Why are we all capable of naming at least three varieties of Spanish wine (what do I know: ** Rioja , Ribera del Duero , Priorat or Albariño ** ) and only one of cheese ? Why do we consider olive oil and Iberian ham part of our emotional heritage and we don't do it with so many spanish cheeses ? why this ignoring the best damn thing in the world? Is there anyone who doesn't like cheese?
Cheese is a cry against gray days
I don't know a fridge without cheese in its guts but Spain has a per capita consumption much lower than the European average . I mean, yes, he's supposed to get the cheese—but we don't know anything about him; we are not aware that they exist more than a hundred varieties of Spanish cheese , we do not know that we have dairies, fields, producers and master cheesemakers in every corner of Spain; from the payoya goat of the Sierra de Grazalema and the Serranía de Ronda to the Taramundi cheeses in Vega de Llan, in the heart of Asturias.
Paco, the goatherd
We don't know what behind each wedge of Spanish cheese there is more (much more) than the obvious pleasure: there are hundreds of shepherds, artisans, professionals and shopkeepers —and an industry that comes from the peasant closer to the land until the cutest cheese shop in Madrid ; from Paco the goatherd to the Farming Cheese Factory in Conde Duque : everything is cheese.
We spoke with Clara Diez of Cultivation and also one of our essential women of the gastronomy planet; Why do you love cheese, Clara?
“If there are milestones that mark the course that the path of each life takes, in mine cheese has been one of those milestones. One before and one after. The channel that connected me with the world of crafts , of the appreciation for the local product and of the approach to its producers. A door to the universe of fermentations and how they define each society. And, as all those who at some point have immersed themselves in the depths of the worlds that advocate responsible consumption for the creation of wealth in the territories, this is a journey of no return: there is no going back to naivety, to a lack of awareness. I never thought that the path to travel to be able to defend my way of seeing the world would be splashed with milk.
And it is that in Spain (yes, what's up) we have some of the best cheeses in the world but we don't know; that's why InLac , the interprofessional organization that encompasses the entire Spanish dairy sector , has decided to plant on the table It's Cheese , the meeting point of the spanish cheese lovers whose ideology (blessed ideology) is no more (nor less) than introduce the huge variety and the quality of a product that is really so unknown, and yet so ours.
CHEESE
I have it clear: cheese is a vital attitude , a way of being in the world, a cry against so many gray days . A bastion, a trench. It was Manuel Vincent who wrote that “Pleasure is also a homeland ”, and the cheese is mine. Ours.