It is often said that the campaign gives you back more than you give it. A sentence that, although on some occasions it is not fulfilled 100%, in the case of Casas de Hualdo it is engraved in fire. Here farm of approximately 4,000 hectares, in the municipality of El Carpio de Tajo (Toledo) and almost on the edge of this riverknow the rewards that come from treating the land with care and dedication, since the products that emerge are recognized as the best in their category.
It is not for nothing that their extra virgin olive oils (EVOO) are appreciated among the best in the world, as are their cheeses made from milk from 1,800 La Mancha sheep graze on the farm, where there is also space for an organic garden with a smart greenhouse and 90 hectares of pistachio trees.fashionable culture in Castile-La Mancha. The ABC newspaper witnessed all this this week, which, together with the great team that makes up Casas de Hualdo, was able to verify on site the benefits of his work.
It is ten o’clock in the morning, with the sun rising and making a hole between the scattered clouds, when we pass through the gates of this large agricultural holding, although for many the work in the fields has already begun since the dawn. He receives us there José Antonio Peche, agronomist who has headed the management of Casas de Hualdo for 24 years and responsible for the fact that his EVOO reached the Olympus of the olive tree, since he can boast for some years of being part of the Grandes Pagos de Olivar organization.
It’s the dream he couldn’t see come true. Francisco Riberas, who bought the farm in 1986. The 300,000 olive trees he planted on the initial 3,200 hectares began producing high quality olives 10 years later, but Riberas died without seeing the oil mill built in 2009 where one of the best oils in the world and which later be chosen with the AEMO Award for Best Oil Mill in Spain in 2012.
At that time, Pêche was already there. “Almost my entire professional career was developed in this company,” recounts with nostalgia the director of Casas de Hualdo, who remembers that he arrived there in January 2001. “It was a very agricultural project which did not stopped growing because new businesses were created. during the constitution, the lands were exploited and the olive groves were still very small. We were in the first olive harvests: 230 tonnes of olives, compared to around 5,000 that we had managed to harvest before Filomena, which was criminal,” he laments.
They started with the cultivation of olive trees and the production of oil, with four varieties of olives: manzanilla, arbequina, cornicabra and picual. But three years ago, they started making excellent cheeses from the milk of the La Mancha sheep they have on their farm and they continue to expand the ranges they already have. 600 hectares of organic garden where selected fruits and vegetables grow.
The technical manager responsible for this last negotiation is Sergio Barrios, who, with the help of horticulturist Santiago López, is responsible for promoting the land through “regenerative agriculture” or, as they say, “return to the soil what is proper and natural to it”. But it doesn’t stop there, since they also seek to recover a variety of indigenous crops in the region that have disappeared for years, such as the owl melon, the Puebla peach or the Moorish tomato.
In addition to seasonal organic vegetables, the farm has a greenhouse, also ecological and intelligent thanks to the latest Dutch technology, with which they advance production, explains Sergio. From there come, among other things, some cucumbers which climb on the immense vines they have formed, eggplants, peppers and some cherry tomatoes of the pear variety. “You have to try them,” Santiago advises me, adding that they are “the most aromatic and sweetest you will ever eat”, not to mention strawberries, one of the latest flagship products, grown without soil and easier to pick . they have three varieties.
A selection of these seven or eight seasonal products from the garden are those that are prepared every week in a box by Casas de Hualdo, a promotion that is very successful with customers who request them online. Among them are individuals, organic food stores, consumer groups and restaurants from all over Spain who delight their customers with the selected fruits and vegetables that Sergio and Santiago take care of with care.
The cheeses made there deserve special mention. A project that began three years ago, although there was already a flock of Manchego sheep grazing on the farm for more than two decades, according to what is said. The reward cannot be better because, for example, the Pi Corteza Enmohecida was recently awarded in its category at the XIV Spanish Cheese Championship or Lambda de Quesos received a Cincho de Oro or other recognition at the Great Taste Awards..
Awards that only salute the work carried out by the 5 or 6 people who make up the Quesos de Hualdo team, whose hands handcraft the works of art that take shape in the modern workshop. “We treat the milk daily after milking, but luckily it doesn’t take much because it has lots of good bacteria and yeast. We hardly use any external materials,” he says. Verónica Ruiz, technical director of the cheese factorywhich states that the merit percentage “is 90% thanks to milk and we take care of the remaining 10%”.
We thus produce hard and semi-soft cheeses, Manchego cheeses protected under the label Designation of Origin Manchego Cheesewashed rind cheeses, moldy rind cheeses and semi-cooked cheeses, and now they are working on a blue cheese and a dairy cheese. Refinings vary depending on the expert cheesemaker, as food technologist Veronica Ruiz refines and adjusts each piece. The result is cheeses with personality both on the palate and on the nose, which work with raw milk from their own breeding, cared for and protected at each stage of production.
Additionally, a symbol that they are doing things right is thatCelebrity chef Pedro Trujillo’s famous Manchego cheesecake is made with the aforementioned “Pi Corteza Enmohecida” cheese from Quesos Hualdo.. A cake that was a finalist in the third edition of the Best Manchego Cheesecake Competition 2023 organized by Raíz Culinaria and that can be purchased now in the two stores they have in Talavera de la Reina and Toledo or try it at the restaurant Los Trujis, who works as a chef, with his brother David Trujillo, in the nearby town of Malpica de Tajo.
In short, a job well done which aims to “obtain healthy products with their own personality, endowed with a very high organoleptic quality”, concludes José Antonio Peche, director of Casas de Hualdo, whose the philosophy is based on “sustainability in all processes, the recovery of the biodiversity of the ecosystem and the evolution towards agricooltura”.“, as he defines it himself.
