A quest for artisanal Manchego in Spain's La Mancha region

Above: Huevos a la flamenca is topped with Manchego cheese. Left: Alfonso Alvárez Valera tastes one of his cheeses. (Photos by David lyon)

TEMBLEQUE, Spain - When I got lost looking for Finca La Prudenciana on the outskirts of this La Mancha village, a woman at the "downtown" crossroads gave me directions. I just wasn't sure I heard her correctly. "Go straight for a couple of kilometers," she said in Spanish, "and turn left at Hotel El Queso."

The Cheese Hotel? "Si!"

It wasn't as improbable as it sounded. The plains of La Mancha, about 45 minutes southeast of Toledo, are dotted with large, industrial manufacturers of Manchego cheese, one of Spain's greatest dairy products. With cheese factories everywhere, why not a cheese hotel?

I made the left at Hotel El Queso and soon found the dirt road that leads to La Prudencianca ranch, where Alfonso Alvárez Valera is one of La Mancha's artisanal cheesemakers. I had been buying his Artequeso brand for years.

Alvárez Valera's family has been farming their land for four generations, and they have been making cheese since the early 1980s. Over the last decade, Alvárez Valera has turned the Artequeso brand into one of the most prestigious in the region. From a herd of about 1,200 ewes on the 600-acre farm, he and eight staff members produce about 40,000 wheels a year. To be called Manchego, cheese must be made only from the milk of the "raza manchega," a local breed of sheep evolved over thousands of years. Its milk, says Alvárez Valera, "is the queen of milk for cheese because it has the best fat. Even when the cheese is aged, it stays smooth. It doesn't get hard or dry out like an Italian pecorino."

He makes his cheese entirely with raw milk from his farm, giving him an advantage over the neighboring industrial cheese factories, which must pasteurize milk because it has been trucked great distances. The heating blunts some of the flavors and cooks the proteins, resulting in a more rubbery cheese.

The cheese-making process takes place all year, but peaks from March to June, when the ewes are making their most milk. The process is remarkably simple for a finished product with so much subtlety. Rennet is introduced into the warm raw milk, which separates into curds and whey. The curds are raked and tumbled, then pressed into molds. The modern snap-together polyethylene molds may be less romantic than the more traditional ceramic molds lined with esparto grass, but they are a lot more hygienic. (They're impressed with ridges that mimic the esparto grass texture on the edges of the wheels.) After a brine bath, the cheeses, which La Prudenciana makes in 6.6-pound and 3.3-pound wheels, are moved to century-old thick-walled aging "caves." These chilled rooms (a wonderful respite from the 100-degree heat if you visit in summer) are redolent with the sweet but nutty tang of Manchego, as well as the occasionally sharper note of aging goat's milk cheeses, a minor sideline. The most popular form of Manchego, the "semicurado," is aged for a minimum of four months, usually for six. The more prestigious and stronger "curado" is aged for at least a year.

At the end of the tour, I sat down beneath a walnut tree to taste both types of Manchego and a pungent aged goat's milk cheese. As I looked across the pasture to the milking barn and watched the cheesemaker's children play with the farm dogs, I decided that a good life makes good cheese.

Finca La Prudenciana, kilometer 100 northbound, highway A-4, Tembleque, Spain; 011-34-925-145-192; www.artequeso.com. To see the cheesemaking process, which is free, call ahead.