Queso de Valdeón

Appearance & taste

The whole cheese is cylindrical with a slightly concave top and bottom, at most 15 cm high and 25 cm in diameter, and weighs 0.2 to 3 kg. The fine, soft natural rind is yellowish with grey streaks. The cream-white paste is very shiny, supple, crumbly and not very elastic and has numerous irregular, evenly distributed holes in which blue-green noble mould has formed. The cheese has at least 45 % fat in dry matter and less than 3.5 % salt.

When medium-ripe it smells slightly sour and milky with a clear note of mould; with ripening the smell becomes more intense, savoury and fruity. The taste is intense, salty-sharp and slightly pungent; it becomes stronger with longer ripening and even more intense with goat’s or sheep’s milk. Besides the whole cheese it is available in pieces and “whipped”: as a homogeneous, rindless, almost buttery mass with blue-green mould, in packs of 20 g to 6 kg.

Production

The milk in the cheese vat must contain at least 3.5 % fat, 3.1 % protein and 12 % dry matter. It coagulates through lactic acid and rennet. Cheese made from raw milk ripens for at least two months, cheese from pasteurised milk for at least one month. Ripening takes place at cool temperatures and high humidity, such as also prevail in the caves of the area. Production and ripening take place in the area. Each whole or whipped cheese receives a control label with its own serial number.

Origin & history

Posada de Valdeón lies in the Picos de Europa National Park, in a valley basin at an average altitude of 650 m that is closed off by the passes of Panderruedas (1,450 m), Pontón (1,311 m) and Pandetrave (1,562 m). The climate is a high mountain climate with long, cold winters and more than 100 days of frost between November and April, and short, cool summers with fog and high humidity. Precipitation is 1,100 mm in the valley and 1,800 mm on the peaks. According to the specification, this microclimate and the caves of the area favour the development of the microflora typical of the cheese.

According to the specification, cheesemaking in the valley goes back to pre-Roman times, at that time with goat’s milk. Pascual Madoz describes cheesemaking and the importance of goats in the villages of the valley in his Diccionario (1845–1859). In summer the goats’ milk was made into cheese in huts on the high pastures or carried down to the valley; in 1892 the Count of Saint-Saud described how the young women of Valdeón climbed up to the pastures twice a day. From the beginning of the 20th century, blue cheese was an important source of income for the regional markets. Marmeta Pérez Marcos, born in Caín in 1922, recounts how her family curdled milk from goats and sheep and some cow’s milk with goat rennet, dried the cheeses in shepherds’ huts and placed them in caves so that they would develop blue mould.