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F
azenda Atalaia is
bustling with life
when I arrive, hungry
from the 85-mile
early morning drive
out of São Paulo
into the Serra da
Mantiqueira—a mountain range that
stretches some 300 miles across
swathes of São Paulo, Minas Gerais,
and Rio de Janeiro states. Tractors
thunder about, cows are mustering for
milking time, and the recently arrived
flock of ewes is in the midst of giving
birth to the farm's first batch of lambs.
A strong espresso and a bowl of steaming pão de queijo (cheese bread made
with the farm's own cheese) provide a restoring welcome and encapsulate
the synergy here between cheesemaking and hospitality.
A steady stream of visitors turns up throughout the day for coffee, lunch,
or just to stock up on cheese, bread, and freshly baked cakes. Cheesemaker
Rosana Rezende greets everyone with typical Brazilian cheer and open arms.
Fazenda Atalaia hasn't always been a destination for visitors, though. This
shift came about in 2016, almost from one day to the next, when Rosana's
Tulha cheese won a coveted Gold medal at the World Cheese Awards in
Spain—the first artisanal Brazilian cheese to do so.
"I remember it as though it was today, I almost fainted," she tells me,
laughing. The São Paulo cheese merchant Bruno Cabral from Mestre
Queijeiro, who had taken her samples to the awards, rang Rosana with
the news and told her to get ready to make a lot of Tulha. "'Tulha is
going out into the world,' he said to me. And that's how it happened. It
was a whirlwind of people. They didn't want to know if we were ready,
they came any way."
Tulha cheese being
moulded into rounds
