#llanut

This wild and wooly wheel is the Llanut, a ewe's milk, geotrichum-rinded lactic cheese from cheesemaker Manel Marcé of Mas Marce Formatge de Pastor in Empordà, in the Catalonia region of Spain. The white cloud is in fact wool — and not penicillium candidum mold on steroids — and is more than just a gimmick. The cheese is actually aged in the wool, and the lanolin oils in the wool, as well as natural cultures trapped in the fibers, contribute to the final aroma and flavor of the cheese, as well as aiding in maintaining proper moisture levels around the wheel. All of Marcé's cheeses are made with thistle rennet, common to Iberian cheeses. 

Mas Marcé have made the preservation of heritage Catalonian sheep breeds part of their mission. Manel is the sixth generation of sheepherdersand grew up within the tradition of transhumance (the movement of animals and their human caretakers up into and down from the mountain pastures with the seasons), and the Llanut is made with the milk — and wool — of the endangered Ripoll sheep of the region. Production is seasonal, for 8 months of the year. Mas Marcé recently won a Forum Gastronomic award for this cheese. 

This wheel of Llanut was incredibly soft and pillowy to the touch and had to be handled carefully to avoid tearing the delicate, wrinkled rind. The wool, packed around the wheel when it arrives, is tightly woven into the bottom of the wheel but pulls away from the sides with a little work. Getting the cheese to a slate-ready state takes a little more work and might involve picking wool from the rind, but it's well worth the effort (kind of like picking the tiny bones out of a beautiful fish fillet). And really, if you eat a little wool, it won't hurt anyone. 

The aroma is, not surprisingly, wonderfully lanolin and sheepy (lanolin is the oil in wool that gives it its distinctive smell), but with milky and yeasty qualities as well. Cutting into this wheel reveals a liquid creamline that quickly puddles on the board, with a slightly firmer, but still custardy and velvety, center, almost triple-creme in texture. At this stage of ripeness I would actually recommend cutting the top off and scooping. 

The flavor was buttery, barnyardy and rich, a bit nutty, but still relatively mild, with strong notes of the herbaceous scrub on which the sheep feed, wet hay and tangy notes. I detected only subtle bitterness from the thistle rennet, although being a lactic cheese the amount of coagulant used would have been minimal.