This Is The World’s Most Expensive Cheese

How much would you fork out for your favourite cheese? A fiver? Maybe £20 if you’re splashing out for a special occasion? Well, over in northern Spain, a 2.2kg wheel of the renowned cabrales cheese broke records after being sold for a whopping €30,000.

There’s A New World Record For The Most Expensive Cheese

It earned the title of being the world’s most expensive cheese at an auction, which took place after the cheese was named best cabrales of the year at the principality’s 51st annual competition. The cheese was made by Guillermo Pendás for his family’s Los Puertos factory, who told Spanish news agency EFE: ‘We knew we had a good cheese but also that it is very difficult to win.’

Cabrales cheese is a semi-hard blue cheese made from unpasteurised cow’s milk, or blended with either goat’s or sheep’s milk, then aged in limestone caves. For context, the usual price is from €35 to €40 a kilo. So what makes this variety so pricey?

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According to Pendás’ mother Rosa Vada, who owns the Los Puertos factory, the variety in question spent a minimum of eight months maturing in a cave at an altitude of 1,400 metres at a temperature of 7C. 

The purveyor of this extremely expensive dairy was Iván Suárez, the owner of a restaurant called El Llagar de Colloto in Asturias. ‘The passion for the land and recognising the work of the cheesemakers made me raise the bid,’ he said. Suárez certainly has a passion for expensive cheese: he was also the buyer of the cheese that made the previous Guinness World Record, for which he parted ways with a casual €20,500 in 2019.

Keen to give Los Puertas’ famed cabrales a try? You’ll have to sniff it out by word of mouth. When asked for the address of her factory, Vada said: ‘The town is so small they don’t name the streets. It’s best to ask.’