Mas d’Eroles | Artesan’s Raw Cheese

For cheese lovers, Barcelona is simply heaven. All across Catalunya there are plenty of local producers that create their cheese the artesan way; and, in the city – lots of fairs and events where you can taste them, and let the cheesemakers tell you their story and where you can buy the specialties.

One of these events is All Those Market, and the organisers also seem to have a sweet tooth for cheese, as they now started a special raw milk festival, La Crua, inviting some of the best Catalan producers to showcase their creations. Here is my favorite from this edition of All Those: one of the cheeses produced by Mas d’Eroles.

Mas d’Eroles is a cheese maker from the small (217 souls) village of Adrall, close to the Pyrenees. They have a farm and all their cheeses are made with raw and whole cow’s milk.

Their 4 Herbs specialty is maturated with thyme, rudder, savory and sage – all of them organic herbs from Ossera (Alt Urgell). Shortly explained, the white fungus grows on the herbs and leaves the cheese white, and the taste is milky and creamy, with a bitter point (of the raw milk) nicely sweetened by aromatic herbs.

You can taste it with (preferably artesan) bread and fruit marmalade, still the producers recommend their 4 Herbs is with tomatoes, oregano and ‘dead olives’ (in Catalan, ‘olives mortes’, olives dehydrated with salt after a local recipe) and together with a glass of white wine, also Catalan, Tretze, from Bodega Mas de la Cazadora, 100% Garnatxa, D.O. Montsant. They also have their shop and tasting space, a great opportunity to escape the city and get more into rural tourism, fresh air and authentic local taste.