Cavalleria Nova Extra Viejo Artisanal Mahón-Menorca DO Approx. 180g

TAST­ING NOTES FROM THE CURATOR

Mahón-Menor­ca (sim­pli­fied to Mahón), oth­er­wise called Fomatge de Maó in Cata­lan, goes from soft to hard and ivory to yel­low inside as it ages. It can be made from pas­teur­ized or raw milk. Both have DO clas­si­fi­ca­tion, but it is only the lat­ter that is con­sid­ered arti­sanal. Mold­ed by hand and wrapped in cot­ton cloth, this cheese is cured from 21 to 150 days. It has a slight tang with under­tones of but­ter and hazel­nut. It gains its char­ac­ter­is­tic col­or and aro­ma from being rubbed with olive oil and pimen­ton papri­ka through­out the aging process.

PREPA­RA­TION OR PAIRINGS

Mahón is tra­di­tion­al­ly eat­en sliced with black pep­per, tar­ragon, and olive oil. Raw hon­ey is also anoth­er mar­velous driz­zle for it. This cheese goes well with chori­zo and a selec­tion of dried fruits and nuts. It is ver­sa­tile, easy to add to dif­fer­ent dish­es, and is often grat­ed over pas­tas, pota­to, rice, and veg­etable dish­es. One pop­u­lar way to use it is to swap in Mahón for Pecori­no Romano in Cacio e Pepe. 

It nat­u­ral­ly pairs with assertive wines like Madeira or Rio­ja wines. Try our Ramón Bil­bao Cri­an­za DOCa 2016, a fruity red wine with just enough spice notes to work with this Menor­can specialty.

A HUN­DRED YEARS OF MENOR­CAN TRADITION

Cav­al­le­ria Nova has been mak­ing Mahón since 1899, man­u­al­ly form­ing the cheese with cloth to give it that arti­sanal pil­low-like shape. They milk cows twice a day to pro­duce enough milk to begin the tra­di­tion­al press­ing process in a com­plete­ly mod­ern­ized, san­i­tary envi­ron­ment. Raw milk is the key, the foun­da­tion of all the fla­vor­ing that makes this arti­sanal cheese tru­ly excel­lent above oth­ers in Menorca.

Storage Instructions

Cheeses (except brined ones in jars) should be stored in the crisper or the but­ter draw­er of a refrig­er­a­tor, not on the shelves them­selves. This is to help reg­u­late their tem­per­a­ture and humid­i­ty lev­els — and pre­vents the for­ma­tion of mold. Once opened, they should not be kept in their orig­i­nal pack­ag­ing. Though hard­en­ing with age, Mahón is still a pressed cheese, so it should be treat­ed as one. Soft cheeses with del­i­cate rinds need to breathe, so they are best placed in glass con­tain­ers lined with paper tow­els to absorb extra mois­ture. Leave the lid open a tiny bit for air to cir­cu­late and don’t for­get to write up a label with the date you first opened the pack­age. Your cheese will be fine for up to one month.