Cheese

The municipality of Boimorto has been making one of the best cheeses in the world for centuries. Today the cheese is regulated by the Queixo Arzúa-Ulloa designation of origin.

In Boimorto, families traditionally made their own cheese to eat at home. Today several of these families sell their cheese. If you would like to taste it and cannot travel to Boimorto, we at Boimorto@NET can get in touch with a producer registered with the health authorities within the Arzúa-Ulloa designation of origin and have the cheeses you want sent to you.

If you are interested or would like more information, go here...

Cheese

THE HISTORY OF CHEESE-MAKING IN GALICIA

Our historical knowledge of cheese-making goes back thousands of years, practically to the time when people learned to use the milk of domestic animals as food.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to trace the full and true beginnings of the human use of animal milk; but it can be said that it only became important when early people gave up the hunting life for herding.

Cheese-making began in Central Europe, no doubt brought by the Aryan and Celtic invasions. It is generally accepted that, at first, cheese was simply milk curd obtained by draining or boiling old or sour milk, which was eaten as it was; later people tried to keep it by salting and pressing the curd. The elongated esparto objects with rounded bases found in the Cueva de los Murciélagos and at a few other Neolithic sites in Spain are certainly the little baskets used to drain the curds of an early cheese industry. It is quite possible that the first centre of early cheese-making was in the Pyrenees, where, as is known, a poor prehistoric Neolithic culture settled.

Galicia was without doubt soon reached by the first glimmers of this rudimentary industry. As far as Spain is concerned, one of the most curious documents on the subject is the work of Columella, born in Spain and later an officer of the Roman legions, who left military service to devote himself to farming. He wrote a work on it in ten books, published in the year 60 AD, which contains a careful description of how cheese was made, broadly the same technique used today to make Port-Salut cheese.

In his study of the Celtic settlement of Galicia, López Cuevillas notes «el empleo de la manteca, exclusivo, según Estrabón nos da cuenta, de la práctica de industrias lácteas, cuyo alcance y extensión ignoramos...» (“the use of butter, which, as Strabo tells us, was exclusive to the practice of dairy industries whose scope and extent we do not know...”); but they certainly existed, and cheese-making among them.

There are documents from the last century BC and the first century AD showing that Rome imported several kinds of cheese from Greece, the Cyclades, the south of France and possibly Spain, and it is reasonable to suppose that cheeses from Galicia were among them.

In neighbouring Portugal, the knowledge of this industry is attributed precisely to the Romans, and it is natural to suppose that Galicia was not far removed from these developments, which would have improved the traditional technique. It can be said that until the Roman invasion only sour-milk cheeses were made. According to historians, these early products were made by heating sour milk, and the curd was taken out in vessels with perforated walls or in wicker baskets, so that the whey could drain naturally, sometimes with a little pressure. According to Herdi, vessels with walls perforated like a colander were already used to drain cheese in the time of the lake dwellings.

Rennet cheeses, which require a certain skill, came much later; this was precisely the contribution of the Roman invaders to the traditional technique of the Celts and their contemporaries, since it is known beyond doubt that the Greeks and Romans curdled milk with vegetable rennet (common sorrel, Alpine sorrel, artichoke, fig sap) and also used the curdled milk from the stomachs of young ruminants.

From those times on, and despite the improvement brought first by vegetable rennets and later by animal rennets (whose origin has not been dated), cheese-making made no progress at all until some eighty years ago, handed down from parents to children as an age-old custom, just as is still common in Galicia today. So it does not seem far-fetched to say that cheese-making in Galicia lives on in a symbiosis between the rural world and the pre-industrial setting that has appeared in the last five years.

The oldest historical references I have been able to collect myself, as proof of how old and well regarded this cheese industry is in Galicia, date from 1550, in the delightful original manuscript by the licentiate Molina entitled «Descripción del Reino de Galicia y de las cosas notables dél» (“Description of the Kingdom of Galicia and of its notable things”), which describes in many places the huge quantities of all kinds of livestock products that Galicia has traditionally supplied to the rest of Spain, local cheeses among them.

Other, more recent references we have found mention cheese being sold at the fairs and markets of the province of A Coruña and of the other provinces. In 1900 Tettamancy often mentions this trade in Galician cheeses, as when he writes: «Los días 5 tienen lugar en Illana (la feria), en el distrito de Curtis, también de ganados, frutos del país, etc., distinguiéndose por los ricos quesos que a ella concurren» (“On the 5th of each month the fair is held in Illana, in the district of Curtis, also for livestock, local produce, etc., and it stands out for the rich cheeses brought to it”).

ARZÚA-ULLOA CHEESE

Other names.- Galician cheese (it is almost always confused with the «teta», «tetilla», «perilla» or «gallego de teta» cheese), «de Lugo», «de Ulloa», «de Chantada»: it is called all these names in the different places of its wide production area.

Classification and features.- Its rind is extremely elastic. Its texture, soft when at its best, is sometimes creamy and spreads out on the plate. It is a mild cheese, neither bound nor smoked.

Production area.- Its production area is very large and has probably had this name since the Middle Ages; there is still an archpriestship of that name there, watered by the river Ulla. This cheese-making area covers a small part of the province of A Coruña, around Sobrado, Boimorto and Vilasantar, and the rest of it stretches to Melide, Toques, Santiso and Santiago, all in the province of A Coruña, roughly following the dividing line southwards between the provinces of Lugo and Pontevedra.

Features of the area.- Given its size, the Ulloa cheese area has a very varied landscape, from moderately mountainous areas around 1,000 metres high to peneplains and some lowlands. The ground is mainly granite and slate. The climate is fully Atlantic: humid, with no great heat, and plenty of rain.

The milk.- As with the other kinds of Galician cheese, only cow's milk is used to make Ulloa cheese. Its fat content ranges from 3.8 to 5.0.

The cheese.- Ulloa cheeses are lens-shaped and convex on both sides (like a large lentil with thick edges). Sometimes they are an almost regular dome, tending towards the classic shape of Tetilla cheese but without its typical peak on top. The most common size for Ulloa cheeses is 18 to 20 centimetres across and about 6 to 8 centimetres high, and they weigh around 500 to 2,000 grams; cheeses above that maximum weight are truly exceptional.

The paste is soft, with no holes when well made, or with a few small, fine holes caused by fermentation and by the lack of pressure when moulded. The smell and taste of Ulloa cheese are really pleasant, very slightly sour, aromatic and milky.

The taste is very mild and pleasant, perfect with light white wines such as ribeiro or albariño. It is best eaten at room temperature, between 15 and 22 °C, and between 15 and 40 days after it is made.

Kinds of cheese

Features

Regulatory Council of the Arzúa-Ulloa Designation of Origin

Cantón de San Roque, 17, 1.º. 15800 Melide (A Coruña)
Phone: +34 981 50 76 53
Email: [email protected]
PDO technical sheet (Agacal, 2025, in Galician)

Arzúa-Ulloa Designation of Origin

Geographical area

The area producing milk suitable for cheeses protected by the Arzúa-Ulloa designation of origin covers the municipalities of the Ulloa and Arzúa areas, where the provinces of A Coruña, Lugo and Pontevedra meet. The protected cheese is made and ripened in premises located in the same milk-producing areas. The municipalities included in the Arzúa-Ulloa designation of origin are: