The Gamoneu (aka Gamonedo) is one of my favourite cheeses. It is a smoked blue cheese made with cow, goat and ewe's milk, aged in natural caves. It is a lot less blue than a Roquefort type cheese, but it has superb flavour and texture.
It is only made in two municipalities of Asturias, in the north of Spain, and hence little production reaches de markets.
This five videos show how the Gamoneu is made. They are in Spanish, so I will try to synthesize what is going on:
Juan (the cheesemaker) starts heating the milk from the evening before, which he kept refrigerated at 3ºC and adds a starter (he says "ferment"). While the milk is heating, Juan goes to milk his animals. He owns 5 cows, 30 ewes an 60 goats, and that is the milk he uses for his cheeses, so their relative proportions change throughout the year.
The morning milk is added to the heated evening milk and then the rennet is added.
After breaking the curd and draining the whey, the curds are placed in a hoop. The next day the cheese is salted on one side, and the following day is salted on the other side. One day more and the cheeses go to the smoking room where they are smoked for around 20 days, depending on their size. It's not a continuous smoking process, Juan lights the smoker at night but in the morning it has already extinguished itself.
Then the cheeses go to a drying room for another 20 days and then to a natural cave to age at 6.5C-7.5C for a variable period ranging from 1 month for the smallest cheeses to 7 months for the biggest ones.
Juan installed an electric fence to keep animals out, but he still has losses due to weasels.
Hope you enjoy them:
