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OJ C, 12.1.2024

EN

The valleys are dominated by wide, largely flat grasslands and smallholdings linked to human settlements. This is where the main population centres are located. The livestocks food for the winter is provided by hay meadows, which can also be used to keep any animals that can be out-wintered some of the time.
The highest terrain, up in the mountain passes, is characterised by vertical rock faces, and a karst landscape, with a great many sinkholes, chasms, caves, lapiés formations and deep clefts. Plains of highly nutritious pastureland, interspersed between those rocky formations, are used to out-summer livestock from spring until the first autumn snowfall. Other landscape features that play a role in raising livestock are hillsides, crags and pockets of high-quality grassland nestled between crags known locally as xerros.
The region has a maritime climate, with plentiful rainfall throughout the year, moderate sunshine and substantial cloud cover. Precipitation ranges between 2 000 mm in the highest areas, some of it in the form of snow, and 1 200 mm lower down. The highlands also experience frequent heavy fog in the summer.
Temperatures are mild year-round in the valleys, where they average 12 C, and in the highland area, where they average 3 oC.
Limestone and quartzite rocks seasoned by erosion, weather and plant life in the valleys have a dominant influence on the regions soils.
The climate, topography and geology lend this area a set of unique characteristics which have a direct influence on grassland type and quality. Its pastures are particularly suitable for grazing by cattle, sheep and goats, which then go on to produce the milk that will be made into Gamonéu cheese. The plant most commonly found on those grasslands is Festuca burnatii, a perennial grass native to the Cantabria area which grows in mountain-top pastureland. In the depressions and spaces created by breaks of slope, where the snow lies until the end of spring, we find matgrass Nardus stricta, a hardy grass that can thrive in many different environments, as well as other grass Phleum alpinum, Festuca iberica, Festuca picoeuropeana and legume Trifolium thalii Vill. species.
The cheese also gets some of its stand-out features from the smoking and maturing processes, the latter involving only the fungi and yeast that are naturally found in the affinage environment, most importantly Penicillium.
Human link The fact that this area, then known as the Montaña de Covadonga park, was the first in Spain to be declared a national park back in 1918 a national pioneer in the field of environmental protection makes it clear that this is an ecosystem with unique environmental characteristics.
The herdsmen of these mountains are universally recognised as playing a decisive role in shaping and protecting the local environment. Gamonéu cheese came into existence as a result of those traditional practices of living off the land, since cheesemaking was the only economically viable option for making the most of the regions livestock resources.
The methods and conditions described in the section on the method of production have been developed from a desire to adapt the ancient traditions to the modern world without making concessions that could lead to the loss of the products identity and the way of life that has grown up around it.
Reference to publication of the specification https www.asturias.es/documents/217090/555882/Queso+Gamoneu.+Pliego+de+condiciones+sin+control+de +cambios.pdf/4802241a-a982-144c-5ca3-4596354f3e71?t=1648806575216

ELI: http data.europa.eu/eli/C/2024/674/oj
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