Our community is the largest producer of sheep’s milk and the second largest producer of cow’s milk. If we refer to artisan cheese dairies, these are made from sheep’s milk.
This is because most of the cow’s milk is sold to large companies, while sheep’s milk is sold to small dairies and some farmers make their own cheese.
For this reason, most of the artisan cheese dairies in Castilla y León are cheese dairies that produce
sheep’s cheese
.
Why are artisan cheese dairies important?
First of all, let’s define what an artisan cheese factory is , which according to Article 1 is defined as “….traditional production and processing of food products aimed at achieving small productions controlled by the manual intervention of the craftsman whose products are made with selected raw materials and are subject to conditions throughout the production process that guarantee the consumer an individualized final product, of good quality and with differential characteristics.“
The requirements to be met in order to be considered artisan cheese, which must also be registered as such in the Official Register of the Board, are as follows:
- If cheese older than 60 days is made, it must be made with raw milk.
- The curds used must be natural.
- The product must be allowed to ripen naturally, with its molds and
molds
and bacteria, thus prohibiting the use of plastics or waxes in its maturation.
Currently, there are 80 cheeses registered as artisan cheeses in the Official Register. Although we have to point out that there are more small cheese dairies that are not in this registry for two reasons, one because they do not meet any of the requirements or because they do not want to belong to it.
If we count all the cheese dairies, we would be talking about 150 artisan cheese dairies in Castilla y León. An important number, since most of them are located in rural areas, and are a fundamental pillar in the life of some villages.
However, it is necessary to differentiate the provinces, since not all of them have the same number of artisan cheese dairies, 40% of which are located in the province of Valladolid and Zamora.
On the other hand, in the provinces of Ávila and Soria there are hardly any artisan cheese dairies.
We can distinguish artisan cheese dairies with three different origins:
- Small dairies: those that were born years or decades ago and are currently managed by the second or third generation.
- Farm cheese dairies: are those dairies where the cheese is made by the farmer. This has happened over time at different points in time, in the 1990s there was a boom.
- Micro cheese dairies: these are those artisan cheese dairies that are run by young trained entrepreneurs, who due to the problems of finding work in their field decided to enter the world of artisan cheese dairies.
Over time, the way we make cheese has evolved, but artisan cheese factories maintain the essence of the beginning. Hence the value and quality of its sheep cheeses.
