Queso de La Serena

Appearance & taste

Queso de La Serena is a flat, disc-shaped cheese with a flat bottom and top and a side that bulges outwards. It weighs between 250 g and 3 kg, measures at least 8 cm in diameter and is 40 to 70 % as high as it is wide. The rind is semi-hard, the paste soft to semi-hard. The cheese is fat to very fat and contains at least 50 % fat in dry matter.

The vegetable rennet and the moderate temperature during curdling cause the protein in the cheese to break down more, so that the texture is less firm. About 20 days after moulding, the paste usually becomes liquid inside; this is called “atortado”.

The cheese may be sold in halves or quarters. Every cheese and every piece bears a numbered control label of the regulatory council.

Production

The milk comes from farms in the area that keep sheep of the Merino and Lacaune breeds and their crosses. These hardy animals are kept mainly for meat and give little milk, but it is rich in protein and fat. Pasture in the area is scarce but of good quality; at times the sheep also graze on cereal stubble or harvested irrigated fields.

Untreated whole milk is processed. It is curdled with a vegetable rennet from the dried flowers of the thistle Cynara cardunculus, within 50 to 75 minutes at 25 to 32 °C. Because the temperature is moderate and this rennet acts weakly, coagulation takes a long time and the curd stays quite soft. It is then cut, moulded and salted. When the paste becomes liquid inside, the cheese must be handled carefully so that the rind does not tear. Milk production, cheesemaking and ripening take place in the area.

Origin & history

La Serena is a gently undulating peneplain with shallow, acidic soils of slate and granite and an average altitude of 430 m. There is hardly any woodland. On around 300,000 ha of almost treeless land grow pastures with grasses, clover and other legumes. The climate is Mediterranean with Atlantic influence: hot, dry summers and mild, rainy winters with possible frost between November and March.

Ordinances from the 16th and 17th centuries for Cabeza del Buey mention a cheese tithe: whoever milked for the first time to make cheese had to bring all the cheese from that milking to the priests of the parish church. A text from 1791 on La Serena calls the cheese made from the milk of the area’s sheep famous for its flavour and good making.