Ripened in Caves: Learn About the Price of the World’s Most Expensive Cheese Slice

A Spanish restaurant recently paid 30,000 euros (32,800 dollars) for a handcrafted cheese slice weighing 2.2 kilograms, setting a new global record for the most expensive piece of cheese.

Every year, in the last week of August, the city of Las Arenas hosts a competition where the best “Cabralles” cheese slices are sold to the highest bidder in a public auction.

This year, the “Llagar de Collotto” restaurant in Oviedo, Spain, paid a massive sum of 30,000 euros for a handcrafted “Cabralles” cheese slice made from cow and goat milk. The cheese is aged for several months in a cave in the Picos de Europa mountains.

The cheese slice was selected by the judging committee as the best among 15 products participating in the competition. Guillermo Bendas Bada, the cheese maker, stated: “We knew we had good cheese, but we also knew that winning was extremely difficult.”

“Cabralles” is a natural cheese handcrafted from either raw cow’s milk or a blend of two or three types of milk: cow, sheep, and goat.

Cabralles cheese has gained increasing popularity in Spain and beyond. Last year, 66,226 kilograms of it were sold in the European Union alone.