Clouds from La Mancha

Reggiano Clouds’s Iberian sibling. Artisan semicurado Manchego — raw Manchega ewe milk, organic D.O. — is blended with milk and freeze-dried into airy crystalline ivory tiles. The lisozima de huevo used in DOP Manchego carries through to the freeze-dried form (declared accordingly). Manchego differs from Parmigiano in fat composition: sheep milk carries far more butterfat than cow’s milk, and a higher proportion of medium-chain fatty acids — caproic, caprylic, capric — which carry the lanolin and characteristic ovine notes. When freeze-dried, those medium-chain acids and their ester volatiles concentrate; the lanolin signature of well-aged Manchego is amplified rather than masked. Where the Italian Reggiano Clouds read as brown butter and walnut, La Mancha Clouds read as lanolin-and-honeyed-hazelnut — the unmistakable signature of the high meseta and the Manchega ewe.