Manchego: the sheep's milk standard

La Mancha, Spain

Spain's most internationally recognised cheese — a pressed, semi-cured to aged sheep's milk cheese from La Mancha, made exclusively from the milk of Manchega sheep, and protected by DOP since 1984. The basket-weave rind pattern (corteza atigrada) comes from the traditional esparto grass moulds pressed around the curd; the internal paste is ivory to pale yellow with small irregular holes, firm and slightly flaky when aged, and the flavour moves from mild and slightly acidic in young curado (2 months) to intensely nutty, sweet, and crystalline in viejo (1+ year). Manchego is simultaneously humble and excellent — it appears on every Spanish table, in every tapas bar, and in every good cheese shop in the world, yet the best examples from artisan producers on the La Mancha plateau are genuinely extraordinary.