Formed, the world’s most elegant cheese store

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We do not tend to think about Stichelton and Brie as Chic, but such is the power of influencer, activist and clear fashion plaque. His cheese store based in Madrid, forms, has obtained a global monitoring for his interior and elegant style exhibitions. Earth tiles are aligned on the walls of the store, which is located in a street in Almagro in the city center, and dark wood shelves house the wheel on the cheese wheel. In the center, a long granite counter is stacked like a mountain range with rounds and wedges in all shapes and sizes, with washed and natural reeds, some molded of mold, some pure and creamy yellow.

Despite all the details of the design, ten has preserved an atmosphere in the farm store in space. The temperature is maintained at around 12ºC and moisture levels at 80 percent to create an optimal environment for cheese. On the ground floor, there is a room where tastings and educational classes are maintained, even on how to correctly cut each variety to better try the different textures. “Cheese creation is a very humble activity,” says ten. “It always happens in the field, on farms, near animals, so we want to maintain that feeling in the store. It is not a museum, but a place that invites the client to connect with the cheese.”

Cheese creation is a humble activity: we want to keep that feeling in the store

Ten has worked with cheese for more than 10 years. He got into the exchange while studying media communication at the university, when a family friend implored her to be part of her new company that sells artisanal varieties throughout the country. “There have always been small producers and artisanal manufacturers, but at that time there was no artisanal cheese movement in Spain, everything was very new and small. I started working with these producers and forming close relationships with the casters themselves.” It was with her husband, Adrián Pellejo, that she opened Shape In 2020. The idea was to take the best cheese in the world to Spanish clients. “Those who represent the best handmade cheese practices of our times,” says Pellejo.

Today, traditional principles promote the offer in form, where they favor the old methods on industrialists. “We want to keep the processes that belong to each different space and territory alive, and we want to take the biggest selection to the client,” says Ten. This includes obtaining less known varieties from small manufacturers, such as Savel, a blue cheese made in Galicia with milk cows milk, produced by three childhood friends. It also includes finding the best versions of the classics: Gouda of small lots (€ 9.50 for 250 g) made in the Netherlands by Betty and Martin Koster, who developed their own recipes to counteract the industrialization of the variety; Camembert (€ 12 each) of Normandy made by Patrick and Francine Mercier, who use milk from their flock of 90 cows Normand; and Cheddar (€ 14.70 for 250 g) by Todd and Maugan Trethowan in Somerset. “There are only three producers in England that make Cheddar using the original recipe, and that is the Cheddar we offer,” says Ten.

Together with the cheese, it has a healing of complementary products such as the quince pasta of Santa Teresa de Ávila, bread of Crystal Crackers of Seville and came as a Cantayano of the dry and aion of the manufacturer Fredi Torres, “the things that people generally look for when they are preparing a cheese table,” he says.

The focus on the localized production of small lots is part of the activism of ten. She wants to educate consumers about how her decisions can affect the environment. “I am very interested in regenerative agriculture and the methodology that pays attention to how different aspects affect the landscape: temperature, different stations, soil and how animals interact with it, in a way that is good for both the soil and animals.” Ten gives the example of one of its older producers who refuses to use industrial and bleach soap to clean the tools you use to make cheese, because they can be too aggressive for the process. “Cheese is one of the most complex food In terms of taste, and it is essential to maintain the native bacteriology of natural environments. ”

The general ambition in formation is to demonstrate that cheese creation is not a past fashionable. “We want to create a new language so that the public begins to perceive cheese as a noble and high product, full of elegance and beauty,” says Pellejo.