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Gloria Pomarada
Asturias
Wednesday, 30 August 2023
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There were those who were left scratching their heads, those who gawked at the wild rise in the sums offered and even those who cheered the bidders on to keep adding another 500 euros to the auction of an award-winning local cheese in Asturias province in Spain that surpassed all expectations.
The figure to beat was the 20,500 euros bid a few years ago that set the historical record for the best Cabrales cheese and, despite the magnitude of the challenge, El Llagar de Colloto, from Oviedo, managed to raise the amount in a dizzying auction that Iván Suárez stopped at 30,000 euros.
That price has never before been recorded - and which will earn Cabrales its third Guinness World Record - was paid by the innkeeper for a 2.2-kilo piece from Quesería Los Puertos, winner of the prize for the best cheese in this 51st year of the competition. "Little by little you get carried and in the end these things happen," said Iván Suárez. Eight other establishments from Asturias and Madrid took part in the bidding.
Despite the fact that its rivals put up a good fight, El Llagar de Colloto managed to take home the best cheese in the competition for the fourth time by means of an auction that has gone up from 3,000 to 30,000 euros in the last five years. For Iván Suárez, who had already paid out large sums such as the 17,000 euros last year and 20,500 in 2019, such investments are explained by the "passion for the land" and the commitment to "support the restaurants, reward my people, those who support me all year round". With "the people closest to me" he will taste the most expensive cheese in the world.
Behind this record piece is the Los Puertos cheese factory, opened in 2004 in the town of Poo de Cabrales and run by Rosa Bada Herrero and her son Guillermo Pendás Bada. This was their second victory in the competition since 2007. "We have a good cheese, but it is increasingly difficult to win," said Pendás, 32. His cheese, he recalled, is an "everyday passion" and the fruit of the know-how passed down through the family from generation to generation. "It comes from my grandmother's grandparents and I'm sure it goes before that too.
As fate would have it, the grandmother, Rosa Herrero Campo, was honoured in this 51st edition as the oldest shepherdess. Considered the "matriarch of the Bada Herrero cheese-making dynasty", at almost 89 years of age - she will turn 89 this week - she treasures a career marked by Cabrales and shepherding. "The work was hard, but we were used to it. I made cheese all my life, at home and in the ports in summer", she said. The first born in a family of nine siblings, she had eight children. Today, some of her offspring "make cheese too", she explained.
The piece of cheese that brings together all that family wisdom and that won the competition "is made from cow's and goat's milk, matured in a high mountain cave at an altitude of 1,500 metres, in Los Mazos, in Maín. It is a creamy cheese and is matured for about ten months", said Guillermo Pendás. In addition to Los Puertos, another 14 cheese dairies were present at the Arenas de Cabrales event, where a total of 1,075 kilos of the Picos de Cabrales delicacy were put on sale at prices ranging from 25 to 50 euros per kilo.
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