🧀🍷The Trujillo National Cheese Fair
Every first week in May the historic picturesque town of Trujillo hosts the largest cheese fair in the world. Also a few wine and cheese pairings to whet the appetite.
The Epic Lands of Extremadura
Google images of Extremadura and you get a screenful of Moorish castles, Renaissance monasteries and churches, 2000-year-old Roman theatres, aqueducts, and temples, medieval towns and villages, dramatic mountain ranges, wide green pastures of oak groves, undulating hills of olive trees, and endless terraces of cherry blossoms.
This enchanting land 2.5 hours from Madrid borders Portugal in the west and is one of the most underrated and least visited regions in Spain. Despite its early importance during Roman times, Extremadura has a long history of poverty and hardship and those who didn’t head to the cities in search of work were tenacious hardy folk who managed to eke out a living in its empty landscapes.
A Land of Conquistadors
When news spread in the 16th century of a vast New World to the west, Extremeños were eager to sign up for voyages into unknown and dangerous oceans in search of gold, silver, and spices. Many of the names that now challenge the English tongue in history schoolbooks grew up in this land-locked region.
Conquistadors such as Hernan Cortés and Francisco Pizarro hold the dubious fame of bringing down the Aztec and Inca Empires, respectively. Vasco Núñez de Balboa was the first to reach the Pacific, and Francisco de Orellana the first to reach the Amazon and sail the entire length of the river. Many more made their riches across the Atlantic and came home to build palatial mansions inspiring others to do the same.
Trujillo and its Cheese Fair
Half an hour from the beautiful city of Cáceres of Gothic and Renaissance architecture, and less than an hour from Merida – a city that makes you feel like you’re stepping into the Roman Empire 1st century BCE, is the town of Trujillo, the cradle of conquistadors. And turns out the cradle’s still rockin’!
Trujillo’s picturesque Main Square is home to the largest cheese fair in the world. Overlooked by a 10th century Arabic castle, it’s a very pleasant place any time of the year to sit in the outdoor seatings of cafes and restaurants and admire the Renaissance buildings, the dominant 14th century church of St Martin, and an equestrian statue of Pizarro looking as menacing and improbable as he must have to the unsuspecting Incans.
Every first week in May, Trujillo with a population of just over 9000, draws up to 200,000 tourists and cheese-lovers who come to indulge in the mind-blowing variety and quality of delicious, fermented milk.
The controlled transformative decay of this ancient tradition is an artform and the region of Extremadura has perfected it rather wonderfully. In fact, all of Spain can boast some of the best cheeses in the world, from the well-known Manchego of Castilla-la-Mancha and the pungent Cabrales of Asturias to the boob-shaped Tetilla cheese of Galicia and the fruity buttery Mahon cheeses of Menorca.
Over four days, around 300 types of cheeses - the largest concentration of cheese in the world - are set up in over 50 cheese and wine stalls around the Main Square. Cheesemakers from Spain and beyond show off their artisanal products that have followed age-old traditional methods over generations. Workshops and demonstrations, tastings, technical conferences, and competitions also take place over the course of the fair. Awards are handed out for soft and hard varieties of sheep and goat milk as well as an Innovative Award for new varieties that experiment with flavours such as truffle, herbs, fruit, etc.
The Cheeses of Extremadura
There are four Denominacion de Origen (Denomination of Qualified Origin) cheeses in Extremadura which are classified for superior quality: Torta del Casar, Queso de la Serena, Queso de los Ibores, and Queso de Acehuche.
The Torta del Casar
This raw sheep milk’s cheese uses wild thistle stamens in place of rennet as a curdling agent and is made in the San Pedro Mountain Range in the province of Caceres. After curdling, the mixture is cut into tiny pieces, placed in a cylindrical mould and pressed for up to 8 hours. Then it is left to mature for about 60 days and the result is a thick creamy liquid that makes a perfectly scrummy paste to spread on bread.
Queso de la Serena
In the district of La Serena, the raw milk of 15 Merino sheep is needed to produce just 1kg of cheese. Milking is done by hand and wild thistle is also used for curdling. While the cheese matures over a period of 8 weeks, it is wrapped in esparto grass straps which help to create a hard rind that opens to reveal a soft creamy cheese, also great for spreading. If left to mature for longer, the paste hardens and produces a stronger more cured cheese.
Queso Ibores
This cheese is made from raw goat’s milk around the villages of Los Ibores, Las Villuercas, La Jara and Trujillo. The flavours of the wild herbs and grasses which the native goats feed on create the distinct flavours and aromas of this slightly acidic, mildly spicy cheese which is said to have a “gentle goaty aftertaste”.
Queso de Acehuche
Another cheese made from the raw milk of specific breeds of goats in the province of Caceres. Pressed in chestnut wood moulds, it is matured for a minimum of 40 days and produces a fatty cheese with a spicy intense flavour and aroma.
To learn how many of these cheeses are made, many cheesemaking farms offer guided tours which can give the cheese-lover a deeper appreciation of this most ancient of inventions. The artisanal tradition is quite unlike industrial processes and the raw milk with its unique biome of local bacteria gives the cheese something which the French call “terroir”. While it may sound scary, the word refers to the environmental factors such as climate, soil, bacteria, and fungi that influence a product’s characteristics.
So, what better way to truly immerse yourself in the awesomeness that is Extremadura than by ingesting the very microbiome that helped conquer a new world? Hyperbole aside, there are few things better in this world than an excellent cheese that goes back many generations paired with an equally excellent wine. So here are a few suggestions….
A Few Best Wine, Cheese, and Fruit Pairings
Food and wines from the same region share similar chemical compounds and the saying “what grows together, goes together” is something to keep in mind when pairing cheeses with wine. That said, there are many excellent wines around Spain that can be enjoyed with the variety of cheeses the country produces. A general rule to go by is, the stronger the cheese, the stronger the wine, because the flavours of a mild wine can be lost when taken with a strong cheese. And the same can go the other way.
The Asturian blue-veined Cabrales cheese goes well with the local apple cider (sidra) or a sweet sherry. Its intense flavour is balanced nicely with sweet fruits such as apples, figs, and grapes.
Manchego cheese is firm and mildly salty with a creamy sheep milk taste that goes really well with a Tempranillo wine, quince paste, almonds, and jamon.
Tetilla cheese from Galicia is soft and creamy with a mild flavour and is perfect with Cava or other sparkling wines, and of course the local Albarino wines. Serve with quince paste and crackers.
Mahon cheese from Menorca goes well with pears, Albarino or Verdejo.
The smoked nutty Idiazabal cheese from the mountains of the Basque Country is best served with Rioja wines and black olive tapenade on a crusty loaf.
Now I’m well and truly ready for some cheese and wine, so I’ll leave you with a fun fact and hopefully a hearty appetite for some cheese. Let me know in the comments if you’ve ever tried a Spanish cheese and what was your favourite.
Fun fact: did you know the word “tapa” means “cover” and has its origin in the inns and bodegas that invented the custom of covering cups of wine with a piece of bread or cheese to stop fruit flies from falling in?
I am a fan of many of those cheeses you talk about .. the torta del casa and oh my... idiazabal big fan! have fun at the market, sounds like a dream
It sounds amazing! Definitely adding this to my to-do list 🧀