Manchego cheese is the product of a harsh, extreme climate that favours the growth of very tough plants which make the diet for a curious ancestral race of sheep, manchega. This sheep is raised under very strict standards of breeding and health. The result is a cheese unlike any other. Although there are records of people trying to make manchego cheese elsewhere, both inside and outside Spain, anybody has ever successfully imitated so many time-worn factors at the same time beyond the borders of La Mancha.

Although we don't know the methods our ancestors used to make this natural product, we can safely assume that their cheese tasted very much like ours, and that their cheese making methods were most probably similar to ours.

Archaeological remains show that in the Bronze Age, in what is known as La Mancha region, the inhabitants used to make a sheep's milk cheese with the milk of a race of sheep that we might consider the ancestor of our modern manchega sheep. This race survived the passage of centuries roaming the lands with which it shares its name.

La Mancha was named by the Arabs who called it Al Mansha, or "waterless land", a perfect description of this harsh, rocky region of Spain. The dry, extreme climate has made La Mancha vegetation very special and tough in order to survive the torrid heat of the summer months and the devastating frosts of La mancha winter.

This is where we find the plants (mainly grains and legumes) that make the diet of the manchega sheep, a breed that has been adapted to this ecosystem for ages untold.

The manchega ewe.

A blue-blooded sheep.

A type of sheep called Ovis Aries Ligeriensis was the ancestor of today's manchega sheep. This early sheep crossed the Pyrenees and various regions of Spain (Aragon and Castilla y León) to eventually set in the region of La Mancha. That was where the manchega sheep put its wandering, migratory days behind, and became a sedentary and, a faithful to the land that was to adopt it forever, breed.

It is a proven fact that the early inhabitants of La Mancha domesticated the manchega sheep and improved the breed without allowing it to mix with other sheep breeds. That is how the manchega sheep has maintained its purity and original qualities, as well as its unique characteristics, which have hardly changed throughout years and centuries.

The manchega sheep spends all year roaming the pastures and taking advantage of La Mancha natural resources, although its diet is reinforced when its nutritional requirements are heavy (pregnancy, suckling, etc)

Depending on the size of the farm, the manchega sheep can live in herds from 100 to 600 sheep, although there can be herds of up to 2000 animals.

There are two varieties of manchega sheep, differentiating by the coats: a white sheep with no pigmentation of its mucous membranes (the more numerous variety), and a black sheep with white spots on its head and the distal ends of its anatomy. There is no difference however, in the quality of the milk the two varieties produce.