Finca Pascualete La Retorta
- Semi Soft Cheese
- Sheep's Milk Raw
- Extremadura Spain
orta-style cheeses are among the most unique cheeses in Spain and perhaps even the world. This is a handcrafted cheese made from the exceptional and pure raw milk from Finca Pascualete’s own flock of Extremadura Merino sheep. The sheep graze on a variety of arboreal species, natural grasses, wildflowers and indigenous herbs that grow naturally in the pastures on their magnificent estate (of 4,000 hectares in southeastern Spain). The name Retorta comes from this cheese’s shape, a rounded disc that resembles a cake (torta in Spanish); it has a thin rind that encases a soft, creamy center. Retorta is made with vegetable rennet using cardoon, a thistle that grows freely throughout the estate. The flavor is delicate and herbal, with a distinctive and persistent tang. It has hints of pistils of the wild thistle used in the curdling process.
Finca Pascualete is a family run business whose origins date back to the beginning of the XIII Century. In 1232 Don Fernán Ruiz Altamirano, after helping in the conquest of Trujillo, was given this land that is today Finca Pascualete, located in the heart of Extremadura’s pasture lands. It is here where, for centuries various generations of farmers have been supplementing their families’ diets by making cheeses from their sheep’s milk. Over time their recipes evolved, competing amongst each other to see who could achieve the most exquisite flavour, as well as creating varieties of cheeses that could be stored during months in their primitive stone huts.
Crowned by an old mansion from Romanic origin, the estate finds itself nestled in a unique environment, thanks to the Magasca and Tamuja Rivers which run through it. On the estate one finds forests filled with Holm Oaks, Cork Oaks and many herbs and spices, like rockrose, juniper, thyme, tender leaves of the blackberry bush, and rosemary, which provide their livestock with a natural diet.