In this corner of the world, west of the Mediterranean and east of the Pyrenees, a lot of milk is produced: from cows, sheep, goats and, more recently, even buffalo. Farmers of cows, sheep and goats have often been transhumant shepherds since time immemorial, in search of the best pastures in the Pyrenees in summer and the milder climate of the plains in winter. Although there are still herds that make the transhumance route from the plain to the Pyrenees, livestock farming is now more stable. Even so, only sheep have produced a native breed: the Ripollesa sheep. They are herds with a mixed production of milk, meat, wool and leather for tanning.
For the most part, milk has been consumed fresh or transformed into processed products with a short shelf-life: pot and cloth curds, and soft cheeses, which were often curdled with thistle. Generally speaking, matured cheeses have been little known. Until almost the end of the twentieth century and primarily the early twenty-first century, these cheeses were only found in mountain areas due to transportation and conservation difficulties. As we know from diaries and recipe books before the late nineteenth century, dry and matured cheeses were used in the kitchen and were also brought to the table. Although high mountain cheeses were known as serrat, none of them had a specific name or a designation that referred to a place.
The cheese culture and industry have expanded thanks to society’s awareness of the environment and rural areas, and of sustainable and socially committed agricultural cultures. Today cheese factories are dynamic and innovative and are increasingly managed by small independent farmers with an artisanal vocation.
Dairy products with the 2023-2024 Girona Excel·lent seal
Organic milk from La Selvatana farm
La Selvatana farm opened in 1970 in Campllong with 50 Friesian cows from Denmark. The third generation of the Serra family is now tending 80 adult cows and 50 calves, most of them Friesians, but also Montbeliard, Swedish Red and some Jersey cows. They have 80 hectares of ryegrass, barley, oats, sedge and johnsongrass, which they use to feed the cows twice a day: the first feed is with freshly cut grass, and the second feed is with a mixture of straw, silage and cereals. This guarantees milk with 60% omega-type fats, ideal for emulsifying, which is why many cafés use it for their coffee art. La Selvatana only produces whole milk. They do not homogenise the cream. They pasteurise the milk at a low temperature and very quickly to guarantee the highest quality and preserve all its properties. This means that the calcium is more stable, and the good fats are not saturated.
Company: Frisllet SL
Sheep’s milk from Ripoll
The sixth generation of a family of shepherds from Siurana d’Empordà produces this intense, dense and sweet milk from sheep of the Ripolles breed, fed and raised according to organic farming and livestock standards. Mas Marcè tends the fields, graze the sheep for six to eight hours every day, and takes care of milking and packaging. Their investment in their heritage is threefold: rearing indigenous sheep that are in danger of extinction, with a low milk production, but of high quality; recovering ancient grains and grasses to feed their herds, and recovering the use of artichoke thistle for curdling the milk.
Company: Recuits de l’Empordà, SL
Natural organic sheep’s milk yogurt
Peralada Mas Marcè also has a flock of sheep of the productive Lacaune breed, originally from neighbouring Occitania. In this organic and sustainable operation, they adhere to closed loop agriculture from beginning to end, from the cultivation of the fields to the final packaging. The milk from their sheep, which graze for six to eight hours daily, produces a sweet, tasty yogurt with a dense creamy texture. The demand for sheep’s milk yoghurt is increasing due to the amount of protein and calcium it contains and because it is very easily digestible.
Company: Recuits de l’Empordà, SL
Mas Marcè potted curd cheese
The division of the Empordà region into the counties of Alt and Baix Empordà is not just on administrative criteria: one makes curd cheese in a cloth and the other in a pot. The Alt Empordà, the region to which Siurana belongs, is the territory of curd cheese in pots. In the municipality where Mas Marcè is located they have never stopped making sheep milk curd cheese using the traditional method: macerating the artichoke thistle in water, grinding it in a mortar to extract the chymosin, straining it, pouring the rennet into the pasteurised milk, mixing it and packing it immediately into ceramic pots.
Company: Recuits de l’Empordà, SL
Organic sheep’s milk curd cheese in cloth
Making recuit de drap (curd cheese in a cloth) originated in the county of Baix Empordà. Traditionally, curd cheeses were wrapped in recoverable and reusable cloths, but for food safety reasons they have been replaced by cellulose cloths. Currently, the most highly-rated curd cheese produced at Mas Marcè is made from goat’s milk, which is lovely and sharp, but they also make it from cow’s and sheep’s milk. The recuit de drap from Mas Marcè is made with organic Ripolles sheep’s milk curdled with thistle.
Company: Recuits de l’Empordà, SL
Mató (cow’s milk curd cheese)
Mató is the most popular curd cheese in Catalonia, and mel i mató (mató served with honey) makes a magnificent dessert. To top it off, the cow’s curd is one of the products with the most history at Mas Claperol, since it was their first product in 1982, when Emili Domènech Tort started his project with goats and travelled to sell the fresh cheeses that he made. Later he sold the goats and started working with cow’s milk. He and Mercè Navarra had twins in 1988. These brothers, Josep and Oriol, are committed to organic production and sustainability, and now market their curd cheese and other products in returnable glass containers.
Company: Mas Claperol, SL
Manyac
In 2014, Oriol Rizo and Irma Casas settled at Mas El Xiquillo, in the Vilallonga neighbourhood of Vall d’en Bas. They turned the property into a rural tourism business and founded the artisan cheese factory La Xiquella. Surrounded by large farms producing excellent milk, they make cheeses every week with raw cow’s and sheep’s milk. Manyac is a delicious cheese made with raw cow’s milk and mixed curd, with a soft texture and a powdery white rind.
Company: La Xiquella Formatges i Turisme Rural, SLU
Fermió
The small cheesemaker of La Balda was established in 2012 in the Llémena valley, at the foot of Rocacorba. With its soft paste, flowery rind and extraordinary lactic creaminess, Fermió has a spectacular tendency to proteolysis (breaking down the proteins) when it ripens and reaches its maximum aromatic potential. Pablo Garcia makes this cheese every week with organic raw cow’s milk from Can Frigola de Borgonyà, in Pla de l’Estany, or La Selvatana, in Campllong.
Company: Pablo Garcia Garcia
Xiroi
La Xiquella makes this cheese with raw cow’s milk from Vall d’en Bas. Xiroi is a semi-soft pressed cheese with a washed reddish-orange rind, aged for a minimum of 45 days and presented in pieces of two-and-a-half kilos. This cheese, like many of those made at the workshop in La Xiquella, has been recognised in many competitions.
Company: La Xiquella Formatges i Turisme Rural, SLU
Serrat d’Espinelves
Oriol Brugués, of Formatges d’Espinelves, keeps a herd of 100 Murciano-Granadina breed goats, and uses their milk to make his cheeses. Serrat d’Espinelves is a raw goat’s milk cheese, with predominantly enzymatic curds, with an ageing period of between six months and a year. It has a firm texture and strong flavour, and is produced from February to December.
Company: Brugués Mone, Oriol
Pla d’Alba
Mas Alba is a family company that farms in Terradelles (Vilademuls), with 100 hectares of forest and farmland and a herd of 300 goats that are milked every day to make their cheeses. Pla d’Alba is a raw goat’s milk cheese that is soft and elastic with a pale ivory-coloured rind due to the Penicillium candidum mould. It has an aroma of freshly picked wild mushrooms and is buttery on the palate, with a fresh acidity. Martí Huguet gave it this name in honour of Albert Pla, whom he considers to be his personal soundtrack.
Company: Mas Alba
El Baldiri d’Espinelves
At Formatges d’Espinelves they milk the goats early in the morning. They are then led to the barn, where the herd finds fodder and grain, and in the afternoon they are turned out to graze for a few hours. After milking, they heat the milk with lactic ferments and rennet for 24 hours, they put the curd in a mould, and after 12 hours they remove the cheeses and salt them. The Baldiri comes in a block of about 100 grams, aged for ten days, with a creamy texture and a mild, slightly acidic flavour which grows in intensity.
Company: Brugués Mone, Oriol
El Bordegàs
Peralada Mas Marcè, one of the most sustainable cheese factories in Catalonia, makes this shepherd’s Serrat cheese with organic raw milk from their flock of Lacaune breed sheep. Serrat is the aged cheese that shepherds made during their stays in the pastures up in the Pyrenees mountains in the spring and summer. At Mas Marcè they make El Bordegàs cheese with spring milk, and the pieces that are most celebrated by the experts are the three to three-and-a-half kilo blocks, which are aged for a minimum of four months in pine wood. The result is a cheese with an elastic texture, the aromatic intensity of the meadows, and an intense lactic flavour.
Company: Recuits de l’Empordà, SL
El Pilós
The Muuu Beee Formatgeria in Ripoll presents this cooked cheese made with raw cow’s milk from a dairy farm in Sant Joan de les Abadesses, 10 kilometres from where the cheese is made. El Pilós is sold after ageing for six months; during this time the rind is washed every week to encourage the development of yeasts. It is a cheese with a pleasant texture, with notes of butter and toast, a long aftertaste and a piquant note on the palate. El Pilós has obtained outstanding recognition internationally.
Company: Fundació privada MAP
Blau
The range of cheeses at the cheese dairy and rural accommodation of Oriol Rizo and Irma Casas is spectacular. El Blau is the final cheese they needed to complete a cheeseboard of La Xiquella cheeses. This blue cheese is made with raw cow’s milk from Vall d’en Bas and is served wrapped in aluminium foil. It has a natural rind, like most blue cheeses impregnated with Penicillium roqueforti.
Company: La Xiquella Formatges i Turisme Rural, SLU
Lludrió
Pablo Garcia is also committed to collaborating with a small artisan producers, like himself. In this case, he collaborates with the Serps brand, from Celrà, which produces a natural, unpasteurised cider used to wash this cheese. Lludrió, from Formatges La Balda, is an organic cheese with a soft paste and mixed rind (flowery and washed), made from raw cow’s milk from Selva and Pla de l’Estany. The result is a creamy, straw-yellow cheese with a creamy paste and a naturally moist and slightly flowery rind that is completely edible. It has a complex flavour that combines the aromatic power of the crust and the balanced notes of the paste with citrus and nutty sensations.
Company: Pablo Garcia Garcia
Basalt
La Xiquella cheese factory is involved in many projects and collaborates with different initiatives, especially in the Garrotxa region. This time it is with the craft brewery Poch’s, in Castellfollit de la Roca, owned by Francesc Casaponsa. Oriol Rizo makes this Basalt cheese from a semi-hard pressed paste of raw cow’s milk and washes it with Poch’s Basalt beer (an Imperial stout) during the ageing process. This prevents the cheese from growing mould but makes the rind sticky and tan-coloured. The lactic creaminess of the cheese pairs very well with the body and strength of this beer.
Company: La Xiquella Formatges i Turisme Rural, SLU
