Four Moons

Bodegas Pérez Arquero is the agricultural and cheesemaking project of Cipriano Pérez and María José Arquero, whose estate sits beside the Tembleque railway station in Toledo, La Mancha. The whole operation — cheese, oils, wines — is run ecológico, organic-certified, drawn from the same estate philosophy. Since 2010 the cheesemaking has been led by master cheesemaker Carlos Molina, who learned the craft as a child hand-pressing Manchego with his father in Valdepeñas. The herd is the foundation: more than three thousand milking oveja Manchega ewes, an indigenous La Mancha breed adapted to the high-meseta aridity (the region’s name comes from the Arabic manya, “land without water”). All Pérez Arquero cheeses are classified artesano under the Manchego DOP — raw milk from a single herd, the producer’s own. The wheel-rind pattern carries the inherited memory of the pleita baskets of esparto grass once used to press the curds. Four Moons is the semicurado expression. The house has been recognised by the Cofradía del Queso Manchego, named Best Cured Cheese of Castilla-La Mancha in 2019, and earned a Bronze Medal at the World Cheese Awards 2023–24.