ONCE again, Spain has made its presence felt in the World Cheese Awards – widely known as the Oscars of dairy produce – with 18 chosen among the 84 best on earth.
But not all of them cost an arm and a leg – some of the winners come from mainstream supermarkets such as Mercadona and Lidl, with prices of around €3 for an average-sized package off the shelf, or no more than €10 a kilo.
Categories awarded were Gold, Silver and Bronze, with a 'special' ranking known as Super Gold, with entries considered to far outstrip all the others.
The Entrepinares label, sold in Mercadona, won prizes for six of its cheeses, one of which costs around €3 for a 300-gram chunk and which earned the Super Gold distinction.
Produced in Toledo, the Super Gold Entrepinares cheese is made from sheep's milk rather than cow's milk, is called El Atrio Manchego, is exported worldwide, and costs €3.41 in Mercadona, or in region of €10 a kilo (pictured above left).
The Entrepinares Oveja Viejo, or 'aged' cheese with sheep's milk, and the Mezcla Curado, cured cheese with a combination of sheep's and cow's milk, both won a bronze, and retail in Mercadona at €3.33 and €3.29 respectively.
Five cheeses sold in Lidl won medals – the Manchego El Roncero, which costs €2.99 for a 170-gram wedge, took a gold, whilst the Trufa Deluxe at €3.99, the Curado Mezcla Canario Volcania, a mixed-milk cured cheese, at €3.19, and the Curado Roncero, a cured cheese retailing at €2.49, all took the silver.
The Deluxe and the two Roncero varieties are manufactured in Castilla-La Mancha, whilst the Curado Mezcla Canario Volcania, as the name suggests, comes from Gran Canaria.
Another cheese sold in Lidl and made in Spain, by the label Sol&Mar, won the Super Gold, but it is only retailed abroad.
Last year's World Cheese Awards put Spain's Madurat, by Formatges Mas El Garet in Tona, Barcelona province as sixth-best in the world – one of three chosen from the planet's top 15 out of nearly 3,500 entries from 40 countries.
The Maxorata medium-matured with paprika – Semicurado con Pimentón – from Puerto del Rosario, Fuerteventura, came 11th at last year's awards, and another Entrepinares, La Reserva, costing just €10.20 a kilo or €2.04 for a 200-gram wedge, came 14th.
A further 12 made it to the world's top 80 in the 2018 'Cheesy Oscars', earning their producers the Super Gold medal.
Although it is perfectly possible to fill up on world-class Spanish cheeses on almost any budget, not all of them will give you change out of a fiver – in August 2018, a restaurant in Asturias made a record-breaking winning bid for a 'wheel' of Valfriu Cabrales cheese, at €14,300.
It started out with a reserve of €1,000, but was not expected to stay at this price for long, since in 2011, a 'wheel' of the same size fetched €11,000.
Surprisingly, these whopping prices for a hunk of cheese nearly always turn out to be an investment rather than a cost – culinary experts say restaurants who put in these enormous winning bids always recoup their outlay and, in practically every case, make a profit from their purchase.
