Vidiago, the town of cheese
In the eastern confines of Asturias, where the Cantabrian accent begins to be heard, The Picos de Europa plummet over the waves of the Cantabrian Sea, providing the traveler with a majestic spectacle. The green merges with the silvery white of the breakers, and the ocher of the cliffs turns into mahogany when the orbayu falls on it.
A sinuous asphalt path, the N-634, navigate between meadows and meadows, crossing a landscape frozen in a forgotten time. The ruins of monastery of San Antolin They silently warn us that there, little has changed. The arrival of summer is the only thing that alters the peaceful life of the valleys wedged between the mountains and the sea. It will be in one of them, on a green hill next to the road and the train tracks, where we find the cheese destination we were looking for: Vidiago.
Vidiago Beach
The environment that surrounds our goal pairs perfectly with the cheese it produces. The eastern coast of Asturias is famous for its hidden beaches, some as mysterious as Gulpiyuri, lonely as torimbia and crowded like the sandbanks of Celorio. The beach of San Antonio de Mar, Chosen by the readers of Traveler.es as the Best Beach in Spain 2020, it is among the cast of sandbanks that break a coast that snorts, launching roars of foam and salt through its famous 'jesters'.
The visitor will soon observe, on the meadows that overlook the sea, herds of brown cows of the "Asturian valleys" breed, of distinguished size and height, who graze quietly listening to the breaking of the waves of the sea. To the south, over the mountains that closely watch us, scamper in turn herds of goats and sheep guarded by imposing mastiffs who try with their barking to scare away the wolves. From working with these animals, linked to human beings since time immemorial, Vidiago cheese emerges.
The expert tasters who awarded Vidiago a third place in the Young Cow category in the national GourmetQuesos contest (Salón Gourmets, 2019) say that, due to its texture and flavor, this cheese completely differs from its more famous neighbors, the Cantabrian quesucos and the strong Asturian Cabrals. The residents of Vidiago point out that the fault lies with the meadows from which their cows feed, irrigated with saltpeter from the sea, which would give the cheese an extra saltiness that gives it a cured flavor rare in these latitudes.
Vidiago cheese
A family, the Culleras, realized that the conjunction of elements provided an appreciated product, inaugurating the cheese producing tradition in Vidiago in 1940. What began by being sold in street markets in Villaviciosa and Oviedo led to patent fame in the supermarkets of Asturias, where the demanded Vidiago cheese is never lacking.
The bonanza provided by the fame of the product is felt in the town, where there are four dairies, plus those private farms carried out by the neighbors themselves.
The cult of cheese, however, goes beyond its mere production. Hidden between mansions of indiano and stone porches, is the Los Cuetos cheese factory, in Puertas de Vidiago, a temple of dairy pleasure. There we can taste, for a very affordable price, the cheeses that have made Vidiago famous: the smooth goat cheese, the harshest sheep, the amazing tres leches and the most famous of all, its pure cow's milk cheese. Do not imagine an industrial warehouse, but a charming bar with wooden tables and posters of Sporting de Gijón, from whose terrace you can hear the breaking of the waves against the cliffs.
At the Los Cuetos cheese factory youth from an eminently rural area meets, both to cheer on the team they love and, like their parents and grandparents, sit around a cheese board and talk about the pleasures, disappointments and passions of a life along the Bay of Biscay. The next day, some of them will open the fences and corrals of their meadows, so that the cows, goats and sheep that keep Vidiago alive continue to graze, now without tourists, on the cliffs.
The Los Cuetos cheese factory, in Puertas de Vidiago, a temple of dairy pleasure