Who Makes Artisanal Queso Oaxaca? Who Produces the Milk?

Sometimes the heavens smile on you. Last week I was in the bustling and prosperous small town of Silao about 15 miles south of Guanajuato in Central Mexico. After circling the market several times, I found a great parking place about 9:30 in the morning.

Not just a parking place. As I backed in, a pickup parked in front of me in a no-parking zone. The two lads in the back hopped out and started hauling milk churns and blue plastic barrels of milk across the road and into the side door of Quesos Vaqueiro (dairy cheeses). Here is artisanal cheese making, Mexican style.

Were these for cheeses? I asked the driver, who was seated comfortably on the tailgate. Yes, he picked up milk from six dairies each morning and delivered it to the cheese maker (there are several small cheese businesses in Silao). Small dairies obviously since presumably here you have both the milk from the evening before and from the morning milking and it only fills the back of a pick up truck.

Here’s the proud owner of Queso Vaqueiro whom we interrupted reading a newspaper. He showed off his products.

On the left, queso fresco, on the right asadero (oaxaca essentially) and above requeson (ricotta essentially). Apart from his three products and flour tortillas (for later) he also sold commercial flavored yogurts from the San Juan dairy.

He’d have shown us the cheese making but nothing was happening at that hour. Presumably they left the milk a few hours to ripen before they started.

Here is artisanal cheese making. In some senses–the warm milk–very traditional. In another–the packaging–very modern.

There’s a printed label, after all. Above the name it says “Queso tipo asadero elaborado con leche entera pura de vaca” or “Roasting, that is melting type cheese made from pure whole cow’s milk). The registration is “en tramite” two words meaning going through the bureaucratic process a thought that any Mexican resident dreads. Below it gives the kind of information you expect on products for the American market. Ingredients (milk, coagulant, salt), typical composition (water 55%, fat 19%, protein 22%).  All this for a small business that processes perhaps a hundred gallons of milk a day.

Bottom line. Poised between old and new. Reasonably prosperous by world standards.

And lots to follow up. More about that milk. More about why a melting cheese such as Oaxaca added so much to Mexican cooking.

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