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

by Paterniti, Michael

  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.

  ONE IMAGINES CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS—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 othe
rworld, 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

  By this time, his family was completely implicated. His wife, Asun,l had invented a name: Páramo de Guzmán.m His sister-in-law, an artist, drew a simple sheep, and it became the first logo, painted on the side of the horse-stall laboratory. His father helped with the sheep; his mother, the coagulation process. His brothers invested money so Ambrosio could grow the operation into a business. Their little family cheese, which was sold in an idiosyncratic white tin (to which the children affixed the labels), started flying out the door.

  One day a cheese buyer from Madrid appeared in the village, asking to speak to the person behind this curious cheese, and the villagers pointed him to the cave. The buyer found Ambrosio underground, turning his dear babies, an imposing figure with a broad face and happy-sad expression. The buyer talked to Ambrosio and realized that when the cheesemaker opened his mouth he spoke in lyrical poems about his family and these highlands and the purity of handmade foods, and how the best thing about being alive on this planet came from tasting that purity in this piece of queso. The buyer bought as much cheese as Ambrosio could part with and took it home with him.

  Soon Ambrosio’s cheese was being sold in gourmet stores in the capital, pushed by enthusiastic cheesemongers on their customers. It went from Madrid to London, where it was sold at Harrods, among other shops.n It was heady stuff, and Ambrosio was rightly proud, but not altogether surprised. His cheese had become a little prophet in a modern world that needed one. A man of the fields, Ambrosio Molinos began to star at agricultural fairs, where his queso kept winning awards, starting with second prize at the 1987 London International Cheese Show and then, in quick succession, the gold medal at the 1989 Expo Láctea, the gold Tarro at the first 1990 Spanish Cheese Challenge, and a first prize at the International Cheese Challenge. This was something a person could get used to. At the cheese show in England, a great Scottish cheesemaker, an older, heavyset lass—about his weight, actually—approached with a Scotch whisky in one hand and a lit cigar in the other and smothered him with a hug, saying, “Who could make such a beautiful thing?”

  That was a kindred soul. That was a woman he could love.

  And the cheese kept conquering the world. Back home, the story goes, the king of Spain, Juan Carlos himself, had occasion to try it, declared it one of the finest, and ordered more. Meanwhile, Ronald Reagan and Frank Sinatra, Queen Elizabeth and Mikhail Gorbachev and Julio Iglesias, all ate the cheese. After first tasting it, Fidel Castro ordered as much as the cheesemaker could spare.

  People began to ask Ambrosio, How is this possible? Does it seem like a dream? And he made a show of considering, then answered, “No. When you put love and care and hundreds of years of history into a product like this one, you can taste all of it.”

  As sublime as the cheese was, demand soon outstripped supply. Ambrosio needed more sheep, more equipment, more room, more cheesemakers. He wanted to find a way to make each wheel of cheese with the same amount of consideration as the first he’d given his father, for that was his gift to the world, but his family cheese was becoming big business and Ambrosio had no experience as a businessman. He had no interest in sitting at a desk, let alone scouring profit-and-loss sheets, cash flow summaries, ratio analyses. It was a waste of his time. He was a creator, wild and free. Let others organize the puzzle around him.

  IN THE YEARS THAT followed the 1975 demise of Franco’s interminable dictatorship, Spain reentered the world like a sluggish, sightless mole. Having been cordoned off for so long, the country’s first taste of democracy was met by high inflation spurred by rising oil prices that left the economy in tatters until the mid-1980s, at which time the deficit was reduced, oil prices dropped, tourism picked up, and foreign investment crested. By the late 1980s the country was awash in nascent capitalists making scads of money—and spending it. The entrepreneurial spirit infected everyone from shop owners to investment bankers, tendriling to places like Guzmán.

  One person busy capitalizing on new opportunities, building an empire of his own, was Ambrosio’s friend Julián. He lived in a nice house in Aranda, had a thriving law practice, owned a radio station, a car dealership, and a gas station. He seemed to have the Midas touch, or at least to Ambrosio. Raising families now, the two friends came and went through each other’s lives, sharing meals at the bodega, meeting in bars, singing at village fiestas arm in arm. At thirty-five they were still very much as they had been at fifteen. They spoke in the same low register, with the same intonations, burst out with the same ribald laughter, made the same gestures. Most of all, they were, and would always be, connected by the same principles: the decency and honesty of that ideal embodied in the figure of the Old Castilian.

  When Ambrosio went looking for someone with business and legal acumen to help with his cheese, he looked no further than Julián. His friend seemed to love the cheese and its symbolism almost as much as Ambrosio. Meanwhile, Julián had what no one else had: Ambrosio’s everlasting trust. At first what was merely the advice of a friend over food and wine became the invaluable insight of a trusted adviser. When Ambrosio expressed concern over how he could pay for more expansion—the demand kept growing—Julián formulated a business plan. He courted investors, wrote up contracts, and, over time, brought several parties to the table that pledged nearly $2 million. When the operation outgrew its stable and bodega in Guzmán—and an attempt to procure the derelict palace with the idea of converting it into a factory was thwarted—Ambrosio moved the company across the fields to the edge of Roa, to an ancient stone building, which was promptly renovated. On the property they added a warehouse and hired a number of cheesemakers. They built a tasting room for visitors to sample their cheese. Every morning a truck arrived with the milk of Ambrosio’s sheep—the flock of a dozen had become a hundred, and they had to supplement their milk with more from other sources—which was poured into huge vats and induced to coagulate, beginning again a cycle that would lead to the distinctive cheese known as Páramo de Guzmán, maker of memories. Trucks came and went, the cheese fluttered to all corners of the globe. The division of labor was nearly perfect: Julián helped to handle the big-picture financial logistics, while Ambrosio made sure the family cheese continued to live up to its chosen name.

  Sometimes at the end of the day’s work, from the top windows of his parents’ villa in Guzmán,
Ambrosio would gaze eight miles across the fields and see the new cheese factory. It was an enormous source of pride, that factory. And that pastoral vision, with its brushstrokes of gold-white wheat in the foreground and blue sky above, of gray stone and red-tile roof in the distance, made a beautiful painting, too.

  * In truth, Ambrosio was a variety of heretic, and historically, heretics did not fare well in Spain. Or at least that’s how the story went: From the carnage of the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Inquisition, during which thousands upon thousands of alleged unbelievers were tortured and burned at the stake, rose what was known as the Black Legend—an exaggerated mash-up of horror stories that pinned the Spanish, and in particular the Castilians, with a nasty reputation that endured for centuries. One British writer of the time described them as “a filthie heape of the most loathsome, infected, and slavish people that ever yet lived on earth.” He then went on to itemize “theyr filthy, monstrous and abominable luxurie, theyr lustfull and inhumaine deflouring of theyr wives and daughters, matchless and sodomiticall ravishing of young boys.” Maybe it was a bit of Protestant-on-Catholic vengeance by the British, thought largely to be the primary propagators of the Black Legend, or maybe the legend did reflect the actual fervor of the faithful, partly played out in the grand pageantry of the auto-da-fé, a religious rite in which unrepentant heretics were flame-broiled before huge crowds in village squares. Perhaps, though, this was merely a sign of routinely barbarous times, with two religious superpowers in a heated global land grab: England was in the throes of its own brutal religious reformation, and more generally none of Europe’s seafaring imperialists—the French in Senegal, the Portuguese in Brazil, and so on—were winning humanitarian awards for good deeds on distant shores. In defense of the Spaniards, many scholars believe that, comparatively speaking at that time, Spain possessed the most equitable colonial legal system in Europe, and at least theoretically operated under a royal decree, issued by Isabella I, calling for native peoples to be treated with dignity.