The region of Tierra Estella is escorted to the north by the Sierra de Urbasa, on whose heights some tall pastures are located, excellent for raising the country's traditional menhaden sheep. In the town of Artaza, the brothers Arturo and Javier Sáez de Jaúregui are still making artisanal cheese from the milk obtained from this breed of sheep, typical of these lands. Of the Atlantic zone, which are the menhaden sheep, this is the last valley in which there are menhaden sheep. From here down the sheep are already bare, they belong to another breed that is more adapted to drier areas and with less humidity than ours. From here up they are already lacha sheep. Menhadens are made from milk, milk is used to make cheese. They are to give milk. It is that there are many kinds of sheep, the rasa, which is next to here, that is only for meat. You milk that one when you raise the lamb and it runs out right away. You take the lamb from this other one a month and then it stays for five or six months giving milk, something that the other one doesn't, the other one dries up right away. The menhaden is a sheep that does not suffer from the cold, as it is protected by a good layer of wool. That is why these ranchers have their herds throughout the year in the mountains until December, when, about twenty days after calving, they are taken down to the farm. There were two there, one that gave birth and the mother didn't love him, she didn't pay attention to him because she had a very hard time giving birth and then you have to put another sheep in because if not, she won't let him suckle. The other one gave birth tonight and she has very big tits and she has problems for the first few days to hold her nipple to start sucking. The feeding of the mothers is very important in this period of lairage, and these farmers give them feed composed of oats and peas, dehydrated alfalfa and grass. In this way they make the milk have more fat. A kilo of cheese comes out more or less with six liters of milk. So, if the milk has less fat, you would need seven or eight liters to make the same cheese. So you would have to spend more time milking and more time making cheese to do the same thing. However, each lamb feeds on the milk produced by its mother. Until they weigh 12 kilos, more or less, they feed only on their mother's milk and then they are sold, we only leave those that are going to be for life, for the following year, the daughters, for replacement and the rest that we do are sold for meat, the lambs. So, when you take the lamb, what you do is take advantage of the milk that the sheep gives and you take it away as if it were the lamb. So it is what is used for milking and later to make the cheese. Once the lambs are weaned, the mothers continue to produce a certain amount of milk daily, which the farmers use to make cheese. The average of the menhaden breed, the average is between eighty and one hundred liters per season, in four months. Some have more and others have less, but more or less, there. The milking of the sheep is daily and by hand, as has always been done. To do this, the farmer sits on his small bench and with a precise movement of his hands and fingers manipulates the ewe's udders until the milk content is exhausted. The milk obtained in the milking is transported to the house to proceed directly to the production of the cheese before it cools. Well, now we have brought the milk from the farm and now we are going to strain it to filter it well and remove the impurities that are in the milk, they remain in the gauze and do not go into the cheese. The milk, to be able to take it, has to have a temperature, from 30 to 37 degrees more or less. So, what is not done is to leave it from one day to the next. We make cheese once a day, so what we do is milk it and with the same heat that came from the sheep's milk, add the rennet so that it curdles, because otherwise we would have to heat it and then add the rennet. So, if the milk is not hot, it does not curdle. The best filter to curdle milk, do you know which one it is? The nettle. Much better than this. Well, the nettle is like this, you turn it over and behind the leaves it has some hairs. Then you put the nettles upside down, because my grandparents used to do that, put the funnel and the nettles upside down, so the hairs would stay up. You pour the milk and all the gravel that there is is getting stuck in the hair. And nothing happens, nothing, nothing. But it's only good for once. You use it and that's it... Nothing happens. Well now I'm going to remove the rennet that is already done. Then I will explain how it is done. This is the rennet of the lambs, the natural one. It has to be turned around because it is made with water, you have to use the rennet with water. That is why, when it is still, the rennet moves away from the water a little. That's why we turn it around, so that it stirs. And this saucepan is the dose of rennet for this boiler. And now we have to stir it, shake it, for twenty seconds or so, so that the rennet with the milk cools , because if it is not mixed well, we cannot curdle the milk. Now it is left because if it were to continue turning it, instead of the rennet taking effect that it does right away, the milk would start to curdle, then the cheese would not come out. So, you have to do it, shake it quickly and let it settle right away, because as soon as it starts to curdle if you give it more turns, it stays like sour milk, which doesn't curdle. For the milk to coagulate, separating the whey from the curd, the milk must withstand the action of natural rennet for approximately half an hour. This is the rennet of the lamb. When the lamb is born, it is born with the rennet, which is this, the stomach; the stomach, when the lamb is born, is small. When you breastfeed all the milk goes to the rennet, not to the stomach. So, when the lamb gets older it drinks less milk and eats food. So the rennet gets smaller and smaller and the stomach gets bigger and bigger. Then there comes a time when, when he is two months old, the rennet disappears, he dries up inside and his stomach continues to grow. The lamb is slaughtered, and the milk that mamau has made stays inside, which is white, and you have to leave it in the air for two months for it to cure. It gets hard, as it is now hard. So, then cut the rennet, when it is hard, take it and put it in warm water. Now add the water, cut the rennet into pieces, the dose that more or less needs to be done per day, and put it in warm water. It is left for about half an hour or an hour to undo this, which is a bit hard, to undo. Then, with a spoon and this, the balls are crushed and they are dissolved in the water. And when the broth of the balls with everything has been made more or less, then it is transferred to that saucepan with a gauze smaller than the milk one and strained three or four times until all the liquid comes out, which is the rennet And when it has been strained, it is left and made directly into the milk. And this is the natural rennet. Well, now the hot water is here, the curd is already made. Now you have to put the curd in a water bath to make the cheese, so that the whey separates from the cheese. So, the curd is now all curd. So if you were to break the curd to make cheese and you didn't have hot water and the heat wouldn't go away, a paste would remain as if it were yogurt and the cheese wouldn't separate from the whey. So, with the heat it is what is causing the whey to separate from the cheese. Now it is being turned around so that it does not catch on the bottom and the heat goes throughout the cauldron. And when the heat begins to enter what is the curd, the whey, the liquid, will begin to separate from the cheese. Little by little, do not you see how it is separating little by little?. This liquid is the whey. These are also pieces of curd that will have to be broken all of them. And if you don't turn it over, everything will stay hot below, hot and below it will stay cold and it doesn't separate well. That's it, this is all cheese, now. Everything that is the whey of the cheese is already practically separated. There are still small pieces of curd left. This has to be broken, then I will break it in the other boiler, because if you leave inside the cheese, when you make the cheese, this piece of curd inside the cheese, the curd has whey, you put it in the cheese and this whey would then ferment, it would sting and the cheese would be lost. I'm going to turn it over again to break the small balls that have been left undone. If you keep it for a long time with hot water, the cheese becomes harder, harder, and then the harder, drier cheese comes out. That's why I take it out. As all the cheese is, you see, all loose in small balls, you have to let it rest for about five minutes or so, due to its own weight the cheese falls down. And then with my hands I pick it up and make a whole ball to be able to make the cheeses. Now it has rested. Now I am going to collect everything, since everything is loose in balls, I am going to collect everything in a ball, so that later I can cut the pieces and be able to make the cheeses. You have to do it slowly, slowly, because if you do it a bit quickly the balls move to the sides and I can't pick them up. Arturo collects and compacts all the balls of curd with his hands inside the whey in order to unite them into a larger mass. Yes, making everything into a ball, it's all in small loose balls. And now to the molds. Well now I have to break it again, because there are still little pieces of curd left. Then I have to break it again by hand so that no piece of curd is left unbroken. That's why I break it again. And now that everything is well broken, now I put it in the mold. Because the cheese is made bigger, I fill it well to the top, and now I squeeze it to remove most of the whey and the rest is removed by the press. If I would only put just enough here and squeeze it, then, with what the press takes away, the smallest cheese would remain. That's why I make the biggest cheeses. From when I put the cheese paste, look at the whey paste that I took out. I would have lowered the cheese more. So, now, the function of the cloth is... If now I put this cheese in the press like this, it would come out pressed but like this, everything full of holes, and what the cloth does is make the cheese come out smooth. After emptying the whey into the container, Arturo turns the cheese over to continue extracting more liquid. Because when I press it like this with my hand, I can more or less remove the serum from this height, I can't remove the lower part. Then I flip it over to remove the other side. That's it. Because now, the cheese is not good when it gets cold. So, I put it in the whey, in the liquid, because it's still hot, that way the temperature is maintained, and then I put the rags all at once. While you fill the other molds, the prepared cheese should remain inside the container with the whey. Now I'm taking him out of here, to put the rag on him. To make good skin. Now you don't see how the cheese is like this all rough. If you put it in the press now without a cloth, it would come out pressed, but still, with holes. So, the rag makes it skin. So, now to the press. And now the whey that I have not removed by hand, the press will remove it in 12 hours, until 12 at night in the press and slowly the rest of the whey is removed. Well, the press is, of course, if you put the cheese on the cloth, something is needed to press it so that the skin comes out, it comes out smooth, if it is not under pressure, the skin would not come out smooth. Also, when removing the whey that has remained inside the cheese, he has imprisoned it on top so that the smooth skin comes out later. This handle in the weight, little by little it is pressing it, it is doing it until it comes out. At the moment that all the whey has been removed, no longer press, because the hard cheese has already been left. And depending on how big the cheese is, you put more or less weight on it. From this moment on, the work of extracting the remaining whey corresponds to the press and Arturo can dedicate himself to other cheese-making tasks. So twelve hours. More or less I make cheese every twelve hours, then in the morning I make the cheese, I leave it, and then at night again, around twelve or so I start making the cheese and it's more or less twelve hours. Remove some and put others. Now I am going to take the cheeses out of the press, these are the ones I made last night, which are already pressed, to put them in the salt water. After twelve hours in the presses, the cheeses have released all the whey and there is no longer any risk of it fermenting, spoiling the product. Now remove them... remove the cheeses from the molds. Now I'm going to take off the rags. The function of the cloth is to keep the cheese smooth, that way it is more beautiful. This is a special rag, because you can't use any normal rag because normal rags stick to the cheese and won't even come loose. So this is a special material that does not stick. So, it makes the cheese smooth. If I didn't have a cloth, I passed it to the press without a cloth, all this would be rough. So how smooth it has remained after the rag. Now, if this one, this is already dry, hard, we are going to put it on the board and then it would stay, then it is to remove the selvedge so that later it sits well on the board. These ridges that remain, I remove with the knife. Well, now I'm going to put them in the salt. Salt is a natural preservative. You have to put them in salt to preserve them, otherwise the cheeses would rot. Water and salt, the measure of 12 or 24 hours, is that you put water, you put a lot of salt, more or less a kilo of salt for every two liters of water. So, you add the cheese, and the cheese doesn't have enough salt until it's floating, when it floats well up there's no need to add more salt. As I remove and add salt, the cheeses suck up salt, so I add a little more to replace what the previous cheeses have sucked up, so that it is always with the measure of salt. The cheeses must remain in the brine bath for a total of 24 hours, and Arturo is in the habit of leaving them to rest for 12 hours on each side. These are the cheeses that have already been in the salt for 24 hours, I am going to remove them here, so that they drain a little and dry a little, and then put the following ones. The space occupied by the cheeses that have been in the salt bath for 24 hours will serve to accommodate the cheeses that have been in the first bath for 12 hours. Now I'm going to put them on the other side, in this bucket, and so I know that later at night I have to get them ready. I turn them over. Salt is the natural preservative. So the salt is so that it can be preserved, because if you make a cheese like that and do n't put it in salt, it rots, since it doesn't have salt, just like ham. So the salt makes them salty but it's the natural preservative. Because they have to spend twelve hours on each side. So, I put them on one side here for twelve hours, then I pass them to the other side, on the other side and there are twelve hours, and then I take them out here. Well, now all the cheeses are drained, I've taken them out of the salt, I've had them all night, and now I'm taking them to the chamber. Arturo has an appropriate space, with easily controllable temperatures, which acts as a curing chamber for the cheeses. Well, now here I leave the cheeses to be cured, in this chamber, here they are going to be cured. So, you can see that they are still white, that these are the last ones that I have brought. These like this. So, now they have to be cured and the cheese takes about three months to cure. As the cheese is curing, it picks up this mold, which is its blue color, and when the cheese is completely all blue, it is already cured. Until then it is uncured, although it is fresh, they are in full healing. When it gets more or less of this skin but darker, it's healed. This is one of the oldest out there. And here are three months. Then you have to give fresh cheeses a turn every day, leave a free board and take the cheese and turn it over. So everyone. And then the next day, the same. You leave a table below and do it the other way around, downwards, because if not, the part that remains on the table would remain stuck to the table. So for it to heal and have ventilation, you have to turn the cheeses over every day. As the cheeses age, the care and change of position on the shelves ceases to be so rigorous. Keeping at a temperature between 8 and 12 degrees, the cheeses will reach the best organoleptic qualities to be consumed. Today, thanks to Arturo and Javier, who still preserve the traditional methods of making cheese, we can learn about one of the most important elements of the pastoral culture in Tierra Estella. I'm Eugenio Monesma, director and producer of the documentary you just saw. 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