Portuguese sheep’s milk cheese voted “best in world”
Portugal Resident
… and sells out almost immediately
On Saturday, the Queijaria Quinta do Pomar cheese factory in Soalheira, Fundão, saw its buttery sheep’s milk cheese honoured as the best in the world – and stocks sold out immediately.
“The phone calls don’t stop. Since Saturday, it has been pandemonium, in a good way,” Quinta do Pomar’s 73-year-old founder Joaquim Duarte Alves, tells Lusa.
This year, he says he started to stay “in the background” handing leadership of the business over to his 48-year-old son, Nuno, and daughter-in-law, Sonia.
The couple has thus had almost no minute in which to catch their breaths.
With the latest batch of award-winning cheese sold out from underneath them, there is now doubt that there will be enough raw milk to fulfil all the Christmas orders.
“We’re getting orders from people who want to export to the United States, to France, to various countries – and cheese isn’t made overnight! It takes 45 days to mature,” Alves explains.
Queijaria Quinta do Pomar’s buttery sheep’s milk cheese won its accolade at the “World Cheese Awards 2024”, in Viseu, where 4,786 cheeses competed from 47 countries.
Alves describes it has a “serra-type cheese, made with raw sheep’s milk, curdled with thistle flower”.
The most crucial ingredient is the raw material: “good milk, bought from producers in the Serra da Gardunha “within a radius of 10 to 15 kilometres”.
He also said you need to know how to clean the thistle, and exactly how much seasoning, thistle and salt is needed.
The maturing process is also carefully measured, in terms of the temperature at which cheeses must be kept in shelves “in a dark chamber”.
With an annual turnover of €1 million, Alves’ cheese factory has 12 employees and produces around 400 to 500 cheeses every day, of which 150 to 200 are the award-winning buttery sheep’s milk cheeses.
“This award isn’t just ours. It belongs to Soalheira, to Fundão, to the region’s milk producers and to Portugal,” he concludes.
Source material: LUSA
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