Casares Cheese Heads to World Cheese Awards in Cordoba Casares cheese goes global: Queseria Crestellina enters its semi-cured Payoya goat cheese in the World Cheese Awards in Cordoba for the first time. region: Casares | category: Lifestyle Casares has a postcard reputation built on white houses stacked down a hillside, but this week the mountain village is exporting something quieter and just as characteristic: cheese. Queseria Crestellina, the family dairy named after the rocky ridge that watches over the town, has entered its semi-cured goat cheese in the World Cheese Awards for the first time, putting one of Malaga province's smallest producers in front of judges from around the planet. The competition, which Spaniards know as the world championship of cheese, runs in Cordoba from November 12 to 15 and will bring together close to five thousand cheeses from producers of every size and continent. Cordoba has spent the autumn preparing for the International Cheese Festival built around the awards, with the city billing itself for a few days as the world capital of cheese. For a dairy that milks Payoya goats in the hills behind the Costa del Sol, it is a short trip and a very long stage. Crestellina is not new to competitions. The dairy has collected awards in the past, but it deliberately stepped away from contests for several years, troubled by judging systems its people did not fully trust, and preferred to concentrate on the day to day of the farm and the cheese room. What brought the family back was geography as much as ambition: with the World Cheese Awards finally held in Andalusia, the chance to take part close to home was too good to waste. Juan Ocaña, who runs the dairy, was open about the goal when he spoke on local radio. More than winning another prize, he said, what the family really wants is to break out of its daily routine, meet other producers and see other ways of making cheese. There is also a quieter motive: an entry from Casares puts cheesemaking in Malaga province on an international table, and links it to the Payoya goat, the breed that shapes both the local landscape and the flavour of its most distinctive cheese. The timing of the debut is about continuity as much as competition. Ocania's niece Erika has recently joined the business, representing the fifth generation connected to the dairy. For a family firm, and for the small livestock farms of the sierra that face growing pressure from every side, that succession matters at least as much as any medal. Mozzarella prizes come and go; a granddaughter who chooses the goats does not. The World Cheese Awards does not crown a single champion in the way a race does. Judges split the entries into classes, taste blind and award medals at several levels, so a small producer is measured against a standard rather than flattened by an industrial budget. That format suits a dairy like Crestellina, which has grown on workshops, tastings and farm visits rather than on advertising: schools, families and international visitors already cross the threshold to meet the Payoya goats and watch the cheese being made, with activities on offer in several languages. Visitors who want to taste the entry before the judges do are in luck, because the dairy is on the list of things that make Casares more than a viewpoint. The village sits between the coast road and the Serrania, close enough for a morning trip from Estepona or Sotogrande, and visits can be combined with the walk up to the castle or the paths around Crestellina itself, where griffon vultures ride the ridge and the village turns apricot at sunset. The white Calle Arenal, the square in front of the church and the slow road down to the sea make the kind of itinerary that ends, naturally, at a table. Medals in Cordoba will be decided over the four days of judging, across the categories the competition uses. Whether Crestellina's semi-cured cheese collects a super gold, a gold or nothing at all, the entry itself is the news: a fifth-generation family dairy from a village of a few thousand people, walking into the biggest cheese competition on earth, with a goat that has been walking these hills for centuries. For Casares, a town that has spent years polishing its heritage credentials, the message landed at exactly the right time. The road up from the coast may be hairpin and narrow, but this month it leads to the world cheese table.