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The Serpa cheese is possibly the most famous traditional cheese in Alentejo,
being its singular strong scent and spicy flavour part
of cultural inheritance of Baixo Alentejo people. Its
origin is lost in time and it is a sheep cured cheese,
with creamy half-compact paste with few or none holes.
The Serpa is obtained by the slow draining of curdling
after the coagulation of sheep raw milk with the infusion
of a thistle. A soft thin and slightly wrinkled cape,
straw yellow, covers a whole and creamy paste of the
same colour, soft and deformable in the cut, can even
spill.
Cheeses are kept for at least one month in "Linen
Rooms" (Cheese-dairy) in a cool and moist environment
till they reach the right point of maturation. Proceeding
from a region with the range of twelve subdivision of
districts of Baixo Alentejo, it’s also its climate,
soil and pasture the Serpa owes the characteristics
that make it a unique cheese.
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