Queso de Valdeon
Queserías Picos de Europa SL
c/Travesía
de Prada, 2
24915 Posada de Valdeón (León)
Consejo Regulador de la Indicación Geográfica Protegida "Queso de Valdeón".
c/El
Cantón s/n
24915 Posada de Valdeón (León)
‘Queso de Valdeón’ is a fat, blue-veined cheese manufactured from cow's milk or from a mixture of cow's milk and ewe's and/or goat's milk and is marketed whole or as crumbled cheese. The rind of the whole cheese is natural, thin, tender and of yellowish colour with grey tones. The cheese itself is of ivory to cream colour and is shiny with a faint aureole depending on the degree of ripeness. When cut, numerous irregular, variably sized, evenly distributed, greenish blue holes can be seen. It has an intense, salty, spicy and slightly sharp taste.
The cheese has a fat content of at least 45 %, a moisture content of at least 30 % and a salt content of less that 3,5 %.
The whole cheese is cylindrical in shape and weighs between 0,5 and 3 kg. It may also be
marketed in wedges of a minimum weight of 250 g.
The crumbled version is without rind and has the same colour, smell and taste of the whole cheese but the cream is sticky, increasingly so as it gets warmer, with a medium, almost buttery
consistency. It is packed in portions of between 20 g and 1,5 kg.
Produced in the area of the municipality of Posada de Valdeón (León).
On arrival at the cheese dairy, the different deliveries of milk are analysed to ensure that the milk in the curdling vat meets the following criteria: fat > 3,5 %, protein > 3,1 %, dry matter > 12,0 %.
The necessary rennet is added to ensure lactic-acid coagulation lasting 60 and 120 minutes. While
still in the curdling vat, the curd is injected with Penicillium fungus. During coagulation and
addition of the fungus, the milk must be kept at a temperature of between 28 and 32 °C.
The curd is cut to obtain grains of approximately one cubic centimetre. It is then left to rest for
between 14 and 17 minutes. It is subsequently stirred, the whey is drained off and the curd is placed in the cylindrical moulds in which it will acquire its shape, leaving the grains loosely packed, and is left to rest. Next, it is salted with dry salt on both faces and pricked to allow air to penetrate inside the curd.
The temperature of the ripening rooms must be between 5 and 10 °C, with humidity of more than 85 %. The cheeses are ripened for a minimum of two months for cheeses manufactured with raw milk and one and a half months for cheeses manufactured with pasteurised milk. Crumbled cheese is made as follows from cheeses made and ripened in accordance with the method described above: the crust is removed and the cheese is then cut up, crumbled and packed.
There is evidence that goat's milk cheese was made in Valdeón in pre-Roman times. Pascual Madoz, in his Diccionario (1845-1859), refers to cheese production and the size of the goat population in the Valdeón Valley. During the second half of the nineteenth century, cheese production was an important activity in the Valdeón Valley. When livestock was grazed in high pasture during the summer, milk was made into cheese directly in the shepherds' huts or carried down to the valley. The Count of Saint-Saud testified to this in 1892: ‘The robust young women of Valdeón climb up there morning and evening, wearing their clogs with three wooden blocks attached to the sole, carrying a goat-skin bag in which, on the way up, they carry their food and, on the way down, they carry wineskins full of milk from the herds on the mountain’. The cheese was ripened in mountain caves.
The defined area is a valley at an average altitude of 650 metres between the substantial natural barriers formed by the Panderruedas Pass (1 450 metres), the Pontón Pass (1 311 metres) and the Pandetrave Pass (1 562 metres). There is a large number of natural caves in the mountains, which have always been used by shepherds for shelter and for ripening cheese.
The defined area has a high-mountain climate. Winters are long and cold, with more than 100
days of frost between November and April and abundant precipitation, often in the form of snow.
Summers are short and cool, with average temperatures ranging between 5 or 6 and 18 °C. There
is abundant precipitation and high relative humidity because of fog and mist. Average annual
precipitation is 1 100 mm in the valley and 1 800 mm on the peaks. This special microclimate favours the development of the microbial flora characteristic of the area's cheeses.
