The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World's Greatest Piece of Cheese (9 page)

Simultaneous with Ambrosio’s effort to control the quality of milk—to ensure that the sheep were expressing uniformly thick and creamy
leche
with a faint bloom of flowers and caramel—he focused his attention on the bigger experiment in the horse-stall lab. Behind the weathered door was a world of fire and boiling liquid. All cheeses, from blue to Gruyère, from those sporting pale, bloomy rinds to those with orange overcoats, are created equal, or at least adhere to the same three basic principles in their creation: the conversion of milk to curds by the introduction of rennet and the expulsion of water, or whey; the demineralization of what’s known as the “casein,” the predominant protein in milk; and the addition of salt to a nascent, ripening
queso
. And while all cheese is a solid born of liquid,
^e
each also contains varying degrees of water, acid, and salt content, which affect the ripening process and determine in part the bouquet, texture, and flavor of each individual cheese.
^f

In Ambrosio’s stall, the milk was poured from canister to vat, at which time he added the rennet, a natural coagulating agent of enzymes,
^g
which had the effect of gathering casein molecules together just as planets formed from molecular clouds. Next, the thickening broth was cut into floating blocks with a cheese harp, then heated to temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and stirred, further dividing the fat from the liquid, the curds from the whey. These growing milk planets—known in Spanish as
la cuajada
and in English as
“micelles”—clumped or, in cheesemaker jargon, “knitted” into blocks and glops of curd, and were separated out by draining the whey.

For Ambrosio, cheesemaking was both beautiful and primal: the milking and hauling, the pouring and harping, the careful progression of heating that depended on the right flame, all of it down to the work of one’s callused hands, leading after a number of months to some unknown destination, some new birth, some revelation rising out of the physical. It was an act of faith, really. The curds were pressed by hand, Ambrosio leaning his substantial weight down, applying the full force of his person to evacuate the last of the water, after which they were salted and placed in braided molds called
espartos
. This was the most hopeful moment, when the curds were formed into the shape of a four-pound wheel. It was the moment when, exhausted, Ambrosio could let himself hope,
Perhaps this is it. Perhaps we’ve arrived
. The molds were removed to the family
bodega
, carried down to the cave thirty feet under the earth, where over time the cheese further ripened and began to transmogrify into a version of that hard Castilian
queso tipico
. But would it be
the
version, the legendary Molinos original?

The truth was that countless variables existed within a narrow bandwidth. It was like painting. You started with three primary colors—red, yellow, and blue—but the possibilities they offered ranged from Goya to Picasso, in a palette as wide as the thin, spectral light off the purple ice in a faraway galaxy to the blazing sunflowers in the fields out your back door. Being a farmer, Ambrosio had acquired an almost geological patience, accustomed as he was to toiling in an unforgiving environment. He enjoyed the intellectual exercise of making cheese and, surely, the process of creation, which stirred deep emotion. But even if his attention span had been known to flit here and there with a butterfly’s cursive redundancy, he considered the cheese his own personal mission. The grail was at hand, and Ambrosio rode forth with a kind of superhuman zeal. Faced with setbacks—a bad batch when all signs had pointed to a great one, or technical breakdowns—he dove into the work again, in the name of the cheese.

At first he kept his cheesemaking a secret. Guzmán, being a typical Spanish village, was rife with gossip and old feuds, secret alliances and plotted vengeance. But this was hardly unusual in Castile, a kingdom known for its medieval grudges. For instance, Ambrosio’s avowed enemy (though once they’d been close friends) was a woman named Emilia del Rincón; the reason for their schism—they, too, had attended each other’s weddings when young—had been lost to time. Pinto, the bartender, could at any moment be at odds with almost anyone. Antonio, the local stonemason, could never figure out exactly who had it in for him, but once, after planting three olive trees before the public hall in honor of Andalusia, his birthplace, someone chopped one down as a warning that most took to mean: Welcome to Castile.
Joda su Andalucía!
(Fuck your Andalusia!)

There were feuds over field boundaries and political affiliations,
^h
and jealousies that festered: Someone’s
bodega
was situated in a better spot on the hill, someone never bought rounds at the bar or failed to invite someone else to go dove or rabbit hunting in the fall. To show anyone what mattered most was to risk your dreams. Thus the closed door to the lab was like so many others in town: You never knew exactly what lay behind. Some hid horses or chickens. Some opened onto a garden or a cat’s cradle of laundry lines pinned with sheets and large, fluttering bras. Others shielded personal projects of one kind or another: Cristian had his sculptures; Abel had his metalwork inventions; Antonio had an eccentric collection of sticks and rocks.

And yet everybody had an inkling about what lay behind those closed doors. For instance, it was hard to conceal sheep as they grazed on the
riberas
, or slopes, around the village, or the large silver canisters of milk moving between the
caseta
and the stall, or the bare light spilling out on the street late at night, to form a single clean line at the edge of the door, and Ambrosio’s rumbling baritone inside, plotting the
next move. It became harder still to transport molds of cheese up through town to the
bodega
, where in close proximity to other
bodegas
they were unloaded and shuttled into the cave for aging.

The cave was thirteen steps down into the earth, and Ambrosio had transformed the long, thin space into a virtual cheese library. He’d built wooden shelves along the walls and stockpiled them with wheel after wheel of experimental cheese: various batches being aged for anywhere between three months and a year. Each time he returned to the cave, he spoke to the cheese the way he spoke to the sheep, asking after their health. When a new batch was ready for testing, Ambrosio, his mother, and Tomás, like a college of bishops, retired to the cave. Ambrosio then flicked open his pocketknife and carved out a few pieces, which he handed around. For this, he had a ritual. Before taking a bite, he’d ask the cheese, “Are you the one who’ll remember us?”

These meetings were like salons. Each batch tasted slightly—or radically—different from the last. Some were too salty or sour; some too soft. One came as a big surprise: When the curds hadn’t been pressed enough, veins of mold striped the
queso
. Almost a blue cheese: delicious and strange, but not right. Others counterfeited their way through a first bite—the right hint of caramel, the perfect trace of chamomile—but when the palate had been cleansed by wine and it was time for another piece, the charade was up, and they turned themselves in as frauds.

Each tasting called for an evaluation. Did the cheese need more salt? Had the curds been cut small enough? Was it time to move the sheep to entirely different grasslands? Did the aging process need adjustment? This went on for months, years. Over time, Ambrosio added his own innovations. He found that the cheese tasted better if soaked in olive oil, and if it sat in the dark of the cave at a consistent 50 degrees Fahrenheit for twelve months. He invented a system of turning the cheese: The first week he would turn the cheese every day; the second week, every other day; the third week, every third day … and so on.

Minutes, months, years—irrelevant time! How old was the kingdom of Castile itself?
ⁱ
No one had the courage to tell Ambrosio that perhaps he should set a deadline. No one had the
cojones
(Ambrosio’s word) to say there is no such thing as fairy tales anymore. Making cheese was a lot of work. Inevitably, the fields suffered and yielded less. There were many compelling reasons to stop: his young children, debts that might lead to the loss of more land, the heightening of disillusionment. But faced with the sheer will of Ambrosio, no one expressed doubt. Not even Puri.

In increments, the slow trudge of time reveals all—and one day, he made believers of them all. Thirteen steps down into the cave, the latest batch—his folly or triumph—waited. The three of them gathered, and Ambrosio lifted a wheel from the shelf, then sat back on a rickety wooden chair and drew open the cheesecloth, gazing upon the
queso
. Even as he pressed in the blade of his pocketknife, before the cheese had been fully revealed, by smell and feel alone, Ambrosio declared, “I think this is it.”

And his mother said, “This must be it!”

Tomás let them eat first, for only the taste buds of a Molinos could tell the truth.

Was it surprise that overtook Ambrosio when he realized he’d cracked the old family recipe? Unbridled joy? No, it was the return of that simple certainty, the same certainty that had sent armies south in the name of God to uproot the Moors or launched a thousand Spanish galleons, the certainty he’d felt when he first stood in that field with his father and pledged that he would resurrect his family’s cheese.

“¡Puta madre!”
he said to the cheese. “Welcome home!”

His mother let loose her high girlish laugh, whole notes of musical joy she couldn’t control, and for someone who was only moderately prolix—which, by comparison to her son and husband, at least, made her downright taciturn—she nearly chirped with repetitive happiness: “This is it … 
exactly.…
This is it … 
exactly.…
”

Ambrosio took a new wedge, wrapped it in paper, and they hurried it to his father, who happened to be down at the
caseta
, inspecting a faulty thresher. He was distracted and a little ticked off—there was always something broken. When they offered him the
queso
, he accepted it with dirty fingers, the crescent moons of his nails caked with earth. Glad for the diversion but expecting nothing, he felt its weight in the palm of his hand, drew in the bouquet with flaring nostrils. Before his expectant audience, he placed a piece in his mouth and let it soften and swarm. And then he stood in silence, in a reverie, until his face transformed, or momentarily reappeared, as that of the boy he’d once been. His eyes grew wide and liquid. His mouth kept moving slowly, masticating, watering, until tears formed, breaching his lower lids.

“Me cago en la leche de Dios,”
he said. I shit in the milk of God.

Then he asked for another piece.

O
NE IMAGINES
C
HRISTOPHER
C
OLUMBUS
—who as a boy is said to have helped his wool-weaving father sell cheese on the side, and who ironically was first buried in Valladolid, just forty miles from the village of Guzmán—imagining his expedition to the Indies in the late 1400s. He draws up detailed plans, itemizing the number of boats, men, and barrels of salted meat and drinking water it may take. No one has ever sailed more than thirty days without resupply, and most navigators believe that to do so, especially into uncharted waters, is a suicide mission. Nonetheless, Columbus brings his plan to Queen Isabella of Spain, and with visions of a new empire she eventually backs the venture, providing him with an annual allowance of 12,000 maravedis, or roughly $1,200.

On August 3, 1492, he sets sail across the Atlantic under the Spanish flag, enduring a total of eight weeks at sea, including a resupply in the Canary Islands. The grandiosity and insanity of the endeavor is obvious, and when the Bahamas appear on the horizon, he mistakes it for the edge of the Asian continent. After decades of dreaming this moment, of forcing it to fruition, the moment arrives in the full glare of day. He lights upon land with great certainty—and, one must imagine, some small amount of trepidation—to meet a peaceful tribe. There are palm trees, white sand, a warm breeze, and, he hopes (in vain), spices and gold. But after having the gall to sail off the map into an exotic otherworld, he’s left with a question: Now what?
^j

If Ambrosio Molinos had gone forth in the same spirit of discovery he was left with the same question, emanating from a similar sense of excitement and accomplishment. Watching his father eat the cheese had been a spiritual moment akin to the birth of a baby. The son had set out to complete the cycle—and had. Now that he’d solved the mystery of the recipe, he consulted his notes and went back to making more batches. As those ripened and announced their readiness, Ambrosio passed the cheese to more of his friends in the village. The cheese had been made as an act of love and generosity, and Ambrosio gave it away in the same spirit.

Sure enough, the virtues of this Molinos cheese were not lost on the villagers. They tried it and realized it was good. Very good. They marveled at its amazing strength, its robust nuttiness, and the way it triggered a biochemical reaction bringing back lost memories, for some version of this cheese had sat on their tables, too, as they were growing up. Ambrosio’s
queso
became a conduit back to their mothers’ kitchens, to childhood, to a simpler time before everyone abandoned the countryside. They discussed the phenomenon of the cheese at the bar, its magical, time-traveler’s quality. They shared it at the
bodega
. They passed it along to friends in the next village down the road, who passed it along, too—from Guzmán to Quintanamanvirgo, from Roa to Aranda de Duero, the circle continuing to expand outward, to the villages whose names translate as The Free One, Blond Church, Cold, Bramble, Pine Fountain, and Bucket of Hens. The cheese lingered and haunted, and its legend soon spread throughout the region. People began showing up at all hours, knocking at Ambrosio’s door, wanting to buy some, triggering a thought: Why not sell it, then?
^k