Queso Casín

Appearance & taste

Queso Casín has the shape of an irregular, cylindrical disc up to 20 cm in diameter and up to 7 cm high and weighs 150 to 1,000 g. The producer’s stamp is embossed in low relief on the top, with floral motifs, geometric shapes, symbols or the producer’s name; it covers the whole top. There is hardly any rind: because the cheese is kneaded several times, it ripens evenly inside and out, and the outside and inside form a compact, clean, dry or slightly oily mass of a creamy dark yellow colour with whitish tones.

The paste is firm, crumbly, semi-hard to hard and yellowish, without holes, but may have small cracks. It crumbles when cut; on the palate it feels rich in fat, supple and homogeneous. The cheese contains at least 57 % dry matter, of which at least 45 % is fat and 35 % protein. The aroma is strong and dominant. How strong the taste is depends on how often the paste has been kneaded in the crank machine (“máquina de rabilar”): heavily worked cheese tastes tart, spicy and strong, with the penetrating, rustic aroma of ripened butter; less worked cheese tastes the same, only milder. The finish is always strong, long-lasting, sharp and slightly bitter.

In addition to the producer’s label, each cheese carries a numbered back label that guarantees its identity.

Production

The milk comes from cows of the breeds Asturian mountain cattle (Asturiana de la Montaña or Casina), Asturian valley cattle (Asturiana de los Valles), Holstein and their crosses. The animals graze all year round on the meadows and pastures of the area; this is supplemented with fresh and conserved fodder, cereals and legumes. Cow’s milk, milk ferments, rennet, salt and optionally calcium chloride are used.

The milk is curdled with rennet, the curd drained and then kneaded. In the process, small cheese curd is joined into one piece; repeated kneading makes the paste drier and more compact and spreads the salt evenly, as well as the micro-organisms responsible for ripening. Milk production, making, ripening and packing take place in the area. Because the rind is so thin and can be eaten, the cheese is packed before it leaves the cheese dairy or the ripening site, in paper, cardboard, wood or plastic.

Origin & history

The area lies in the uplands in the east of central Asturias: narrow valleys separated by rocky ridges, with mostly steep slopes, and a lower-lying depression through which the Piloña flows. The climate is temperate oceanic, with light rain all year round; fog often lingers in the valleys, so there is little sun. There are plenty of hay meadows and pastures, along with woodland, scrub and mountain flora on the steepest slopes.

In the damp air the cheese curd dried poorly. To make the cheese keep all the same, the herders kneaded it, first by hand, later with the crank machine, an adapted device from breadmaking (“bregadora”) that was shared on the “kneading days”. So that the curd of different producers could be told apart, it was marked with a wooden stamp, the “Ochavau”; the finished cheese receives the larger “Marcu” or “Cuñu”, which today usually shows the producer’s letters. According to the specification, the method was preserved above all by women, who made the cheese for the family.

Written evidence goes back to the 14th century: a lease of 1328 from San Salvador de Sobrecastiello demands twelve cheeses as a levy. Later it was mentioned by Jovellanos in the 18th century, in the geographical dictionary of Madoz and in agricultural textbooks; a work from 1900 lists the cheese of Caso among the most famous cheeses of Asturias. According to the specification, a mountain range on the border between Caso and Ponga separates the area of Queso Casín from that of Queso de los Beyos.