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Brazil's unsung craft cheese winning fans in high places
"'What do your cows eat that makes the cheese so delicious?'" people asked when 57 Brazilian cheeses won medals at the biennial "Mondial du Fromage" in Tours, France.
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View of Garrafao cheese in Alagoa, southern region of Minas Gerais, Brazil, on December 1, 2021. (AFP/Douglas Magno)
Good luck finding a GPS signal or sign to get to Rita de Cassia's secluded farm in the mountains of southeastern Brazil.
The best bet for food-lovers chasing her award-winning handmade cheese is to stop and ask for directions.
Cassia's "Garrafao" is one of 57 Brazilian cheeses that won medals at the biennial "Mondial du Fromage" in Tours, France in September.
That put unsung Brazil, a country not widely known for its cheese, second only to France on the podium of the world's best.
"'What do your cows eat that makes the cheese so delicious?'": that is the question Brazil's representative at the event, Debora de Carvalho, says she got time and again from French colleagues.
The bucolic region where Cassia's farm sits, in the longtime "queijo" (cheese) producing state of Minas Gerais, harbors a few answers.
Settled three centuries ago by colonists digging for gold, the area started producing cheese when an Italian shoemaker, Paschoal Poppa, arrived in the village of Alagoa in the early 20th century with a recipe for parmesan.
