Los Caserinos – Milk & Cheese Straight from the Farm
While Jürgen’s family was visiting from Germany, we spent a day driving around the Comarca de la Sidra and ended up in a tiny town called Grases, which is home to Los Caserinos: a family-owned farm that’s been making cheese and milk for nearly a century.
We took a tour of the farm and were introduced to the cows and goats which produce the Caserinos’ milk. The goats were especially cool; well over a hundred snow-white Saanen goats, who were utterly unconcerned by our presence. One of the smaller ones even tried to suck on my finger, which apparently resembles a goat tit. The tiny household sidrería was also interesting, with an apple press and antique tools used to produce the cider which is an ingredient in some of their cheeses.
The most best part of the tour, though, was hearing about the history of the farm. Our guide was the grandson of the original founder, and showed us pictures of his kids. Four generations of life among the cows and goats. His grandfather had been a casero, or caretaker, at the house of a rich family from the area; caserino is the diminutive form, and became the family’s nickname.
If you can’t make it to Grases to see the farm, you can visit Los Caserinos at their stand in the Mercado Fontán, where they have a Milk Machine: just put your bottle in the dispenser, feed the machine a Euro and get a liter of cool, fresh milk straight from the farm. And I’d be remiss not to mention the excellent cheeses they offer. Goat cheese, cow cheese, mixed, blue cheese, mixed with cider. We were able to try them all at the end of our tour, and ended up buying more than a little.
More photos from the Los Caserinos farm:
My partner and I travek regularly to Asturias from London (she is originally from there). This August we visited Gijon during the XX Fiesta de Sidra Naturale – in part so that I could partake in the world record cider drinking event they hold each year on the beach – an attempt to beat their previous record (an endeavour in which they succeeded). AQnyway, during festival there are a host of other cider related activities and stalls, including one selling the Los Caserinos queso con sidra. This is the first time I have ever tried this cheese and being a fan of both Cabrales and Cider I had to give it a go. Loved it and bought lots. Thanks so much for the article as I had not realised he whole history of the company at the time of purchasing and was really iteresting to read about. Will be telling all my cheesy friends in London to look out for it if they go to Asturias.I love your blog and the opportunity you have travel from place to place is wonderful. One question though, why did you stay in Oviedo and not Gijon? The latter is so much the better city! Just look at the respective places in the football league tables.Nick
Thanks for the comments!! We’re glad you’ve found the blog, and you should definitely stop by Los Caserinos on your next trip 🙂 We chose Oviedo over Gijón, because when looking at the map, we figured it would be a bit more central for exploring the rest of Asturias. And also, we didn’t know much about Gijón! We were stunned on our first visit what a cool city it is, and we went back a lot.
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