Cerrón Organic Matured Goat’s Cheese

Cerrón Organic Matured Goat’s Cheese comes with a fine pedigree. Not only is it an amazing cheese of note  but it was also Winner of the Super Gold Medal World Cheese Awards 2021 – 2022.

The team at Quesos Cerrón, based in Fuente Alamo in Spain skillfully pasteurise each day’s fresh milk at a very low temperature.  The cheese is then matured further for 30 – 40 days allowing a wonderful buttery flavour to develop with caramelised aromas that are irresistible.

Quesos Cerrón’s history is relatively short with the first cheeses being made in 1987 when Juana Garcia and Juan Jose started to make their goats’ cheese in the basement of their home following Juana’s mother’s traditional cheese making methods.  Their cheese quickly became sought after and the team at Cerrón has always kept its local provenance using ingredients from the area whilst creating unique flavours that epitomise the very best of Spanish cheese.

Moved by the depopulation crisis that ravaged rural areas, the couple decided to start their small business guided by their love for goat cheese and livestock on pastures in the area. As Juani’s says, “Fermentation is the way that men have to discover the secret melody of food.” Through this appointment they explain their passion for cheese and the concern to value the products of their area.

It is Natividad, Juanjo’s mother, who taught Juani the traditional methods of cheese making, leaving him the knowledge of a family recipe; that of Fresh Goat Cheese. The milking started at 5 in the morning, transporting the milk directly to the cheese factory and processing the cheese to be sold before noon. The secret was to look for a product with the milk characteristics of the happy animals that live on the pastures.

The values of sustainability and conservation of the environment are always an essential piece of the project. The methods of organic agriculture and livestock are followed as a philosophy of life, in which the land must be taken care of for generations to come and not thinking about the present. High milk yields in livestock, denote an animal happiness that leads to the production of special cheeses. Quesos Cerrón work with  Murcian-Ggranate goat milk for organic products, they compost the garbage and livestock waste so that they are incorporated back into the land and they are also developing an energy self-sustaining project to respect the environment that surrounds us as much as possible.

Quesos Cerrón understand milk as a complex raw material with the potential to become a cult product such as cheese. To obtain representative matured and cured cheeses, they do not standardize milk, they just separate according to the time of year and the feeding of the cattle and goats  to make the different ranges. The richer milks are intended for low-ripening cheeses that do not need long times to express notes of yogurt, fresh milk, butter or citrus. Autumn and Winter milks are more robust milks, with a higher concentration of fat and protein that give cheeses with greater ripening potential. During this time the goats graze from Monte Bajo with the presence of Thyme, Rosemary and Mediterranean aromatics. These cheeses take an average of 3-4 years to express their full aromatic potential by finding aromas of thyme, rosemary, esparto or caramel. The cheese making team wait patiently for that time, during which we pamper each cheese weekly, washing the natural bark with virgin olive oil from their own olive trees.