A block of a distinctive blue cheese from Northern Spain recently broke a world record. Photo: Pixabay
The latest food-related world record making headlines worldwide concerns cheese. A type of blue cheese from Northern Spain recently broke the record for being the world's most expensive cheese sold at auction. A 2.2kg wheel of the Cabrales blue cheese was auctioned at a local cheese festival held in the Principality of Asturias. It fetched a price of €30,000 (approximately Rs 27 lakhs). Interestingly, the previous record (set in 2019) was also attributed to a block of the same type of cheese.
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Guillermo Pendas manufactured the record-breaking block of cheese at his family's factory in Los Puertos. "We knew we had a good cheese but also that it is very difficult to win," Pendas told Spanish news agency EFE, according to The Times (London). His mother, Rosa Vada, owns the factory. She has stated that the cheese had been matured in a cave at an altitude of 1,400 metres, at a temperature of 7C, where it spent "a minimum of eight months," as reported by The Independent.
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The block was sold to Ivan Suarez, the owner of a restaurant near Oviedo. Suarez had also purchased the block of cheese that previously held the world record. This one was credited to the Regulatory Council DOP Cabrales (Spain) on 25 August 2019, according to the official website of The Guinness World Records (GWR). That 2kg block of the Cabrales cheese was sold for a whopping € 20,500 (more than Rs 18 lakhs, according to current conversion rates).
The GWR site describes the Cabrales cheese as "a semi-hard, very strong-tasting blue cheese," which is produced by artisan farmers in Asturias, Spain. It is typically made from raw cow milk, which may be mixed with goat or sheep's milk. It is then aged for several months in the limestone caves surrounding the Picos de Europa National Park. The local conditions (including temperature and humidity) as well as the action of microorganisms come together to lend the cheese a sharp, pungent flavour profile.
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