Museo del Queso

No country seems to like food museums as much as Spain. Wine, cheese, honey, chocolate: you name it, there’s a museum for it. Many exhibitions explore the origins and variations of the long-eaten foods that make the country a culinary destination. One museum in Extremadura, however, is dedicated to one cheese, and one cheese only.

The Museo del Queso in the village of Casar de Cáceres celebrates the centuries-old regional specialty Torta del Casar. Long-ago shepherds, nudging herds of sheep down roads used since Roman times, realized that the cardo, a purple-flowered thistle lining the paths, could coagulate their sheep’s milk into cheese. The thistle, known as cardoon in English, is a relative of the artichoke and gives the slowly-aged cheese its subtle bitter flavor. With an unusually soft, semiliquid center, the pressed cylinder of cheese sags in the middle.