Living in Austria, Germany or even Italy means that getting your hands on cheese from Portugal is not that easy. The happier I was when a friend from high school called for a reunion meet up in Lisbon.
Lisbon is a buzzling town with uncountable markets, restaurants, museums and of course also a number of specialized cheese shops.
But meeting old friends unfortunately also means that it´s hard to find the time for new ones so I ended up with less than one hour to hunt for our Portuguese treasures and decided to go find *Queijaria*, a cheese shop in Lisbon’s affluent and cosmopolitan district Príncipe Real.
*Queijaria* was founded in 2014 and offers a load of European but (for us) most important a wide selection of Portuguese cheese. All raw milk, all from hand selected farmers.
We decided on a mix of goat and sheep. 2 from the lower Beira region and 1 from Serra da Estrela, a mountain range right in the middle of continental Portugal.
Our first table companion, 40+days aged *Castelo Branco* from the Beira Baixa region of north-central Portugal.
*Castelo Branco* is a raw-milk DOP cheese that can be made from goat or sheep´s milk and in our case took all the flavor aspects of a happy sheep on pasture into its soft and tangy, curd like paste.
Gustav who rates our *Castelo Branco* a solid 13/10 says he loves the slightly acidic and lively spiceful aromas and wishes his new friend who has a such a nice deformable structure would come giant sized so he could paste-ball a little cheese man in front of his cave…
Cabra Pastor
With *Cabra Pastor* we stay in the same corner of Portugal but switch from raw sheep´s to raw goat´s milk.
60+ days old *Cabra Pastor*, literally translated as shepherd’s goat, has a wonderful semi-firm and bridle texture and carries an innocent goat mixed into a long, soluble lactic and herbaceous flavor cocktail.
For our 3rd travel home companion we went for an extra old sheep – flavors guaranteed!
*Serra da Estrela Velha*
*Serra da Estrela* is one of Portugal´s 12 PDO cheeses and is made of raw sheep´s milk with the use of vegetable (cardoon) rennet. According to the PDO standards the only breeds of sheep allowed to use for the production of *Serra da Estrela* are the autochthonous Bordaleira and/or Churra Mondegueira breed.
Our Pick: 270 + days aged *Serra da Estrela Velho* –
Raw milk purely from the autochthonous Bordaleira sheep got turned into a cheese with reminiscents of melted butter entwined with fermented grass on a lightly toasted cicory bread.
I tell you – it´s all you need!
Gustav says he is really taste loosing himself in Portugal and it´s cheese scene and is thinking about taking a winter escape down south.
I am not revealing much when saying I can totally understand him – also ..where there is Lisbon there is also the sea…
até breve Lisboa e Cascais
