Say cheese!

Olive Puentespina

I first met Olive Puentespina at the now defunct Le Bistro Vert in Salcedo Village back in 2011 for an event that specifically celebrated her: A Filipino who was making cheese using milk from the family farm in Davao.

It was groundbreaking news back then—a local making cheeses like Camembert, and excellently at that.

Seven years later, I found myself in Davao to give a talk on food writing for Power of Pen at Ateneo de Davao, so I paid Olive a visit and I am happy to see that she is thriving at this cheesemaking business.

Zero capital

The brand is Malagos. You may have heard of it by now. It’s a Davao-based farm and cheese production house. The Puentespinas have a cacao farm, too, but that is run by her brother-in-law, Rex.

Olive started the brand in 2005 with what she calls zero investment. She would buy milk from Golden Sunset Farm, the “playground” of her mother-in-law, Charita Puentespina, and after selling some cheese would simply buy more milk using the proceeds from the cheese sold. She had two girls working with her.

She was motivated by the desire to maximize wealth from the around 20 goats that the family had. She reasoned that if they simply slaughtered the goats, they could sell the meat but that would be the end of it; whereas if they got some pregnant, they would have a mother, father, child and milk to boot. So Olive started dabbling in soapmaking and cheesemaking, finding a way to make money out of milk.

UPLB College of Agriculture

She learned to make soap from the TLRC (Technology and Livelihood Resource Center) and learned the basics of cheesemaking at the Dairy Training and Research Institute under the College of Agriculture of the University of the Philippines-Los Baños where she graduated with a degree in Agriculture, majoring in Animal Science.

Olive recalls her dairy training days at UPLB: “The dairy training is at the animal nutrition site. We make the cows healthy so they can give very nice milk to the dairy tech who researched how to make cheeses. I was one of the official cheese tasters. That’s where I developed the taste for cheeses. They do it in a lab setup and I would be part of the panel when it was time to taste. That’s where I developed a love for the more complicated flavors, not knowing that I would become a cheesemaker.”

When she decided to learn how to make feta cheese, she flew in a colleague from UPLB to their farm in Davao. But since it takes a month to make feta, after her three-day training session, she was on her own.

“The first feta I made was too salty,” she recalls. But eventually, she learned how to make feta that suited the Filipino palate.

Feta

It was feta cheese that gave her a break.

While dabbling between soapmaking and feta cheesemaking, she looked for a source of fresh vanilla beans to use for the soaps she was making using their goat’s milk and coconut oil. Inquirer’s Reggie Aspiras, incidentally an old friend of hers, recommended Karin Roelli Carmona. “Call her, she has vanilla from Bukidnon,” Reggie advised.

When Olive inquired about the vanilla, Karin asked what she would use it for. Olive explained she was making soaps using goat’s milk. Karin asked if she was doing anything else with the goat’s milk and Olive shared that she was also making feta cheese.

Unbeknownst to Olive, Karin was also president of the Cheese Club of the Philippines. Karin asked to sample the cheese, got some from the Puentespina orchid shop at the Manila Seedling Bank, asked permission to have some of her friends taste it, then gave Olive feedback to encourage her to perfect the cheese.

After some trial and error, Olive finally produced feta cheese that met Karin’s standards. Karin made her brother-in-law, a Michelin-rated chef in St. Moritz, Switzerland, try the cheese and he said he could not differentiate it from the top labels that he had. It was then that Karin invited Olive to fly to Manila to guest at the Cheese Club of the Philippines. Olive’s feta was named Cheese of the Month in September 2006.

Karin

Karin then became Olive’s distributor and has been her distributor ever since.

Two years later, Olive joined the International Food Expo (IFEX) to showcase her creations anew. One of those who tried her samples was Chef Ian Mckenzie, the executive chef of Philippine Airlines. A few weeks later, Olive got a call from Karin. “Are you sitting down?” Karin asked. “Because PAL just ordered one ton of feta.”

That was her first big order. She accepted the challenge, negotiating for a doable delivery schedule, bought more milk from milk-producing church groups and missionaries in Davao, made feta all day and night until she met the orders. “When you say yes, you do whatever it takes. I sealed my reputation as a supplier,” Olive says proudly.

It was also Karin who encouraged Olive to make Chevre (French goat cheese). “It sells so much in Santi’s!” Karin advised. But Olive didn’t want to make Chevre initially, confessing, “I was so afraid of being judged by the French.” But with Karin’s encouragement, Olive gave it a go.

Later, when PAL asked her to make special cheese for its First and Business Class passengers, Olive created Chevre mixed with Philippine mangoes. During our visit to the Malagos Farm in Davao, I got to try the Chevre with Davao pineapples—it was exquisite! It has that beautiful texture of French chevre but given a delicate sweetness using the pineapples. I bought 10 packs instantly!

Hans

Karin didn’t stop at just encouraging Olive to make Chevre. In 2009, Karin brought some of Olive’s cheese to Switzerland and somehow got Swiss cheese master Hanspring Wuthrich to try her cheese. Seeing the potential of Olive as an artisanal cheesemaker, he flew to Davao using his own money and stayed at the Malagos farm for three weeks just to teach her how to make cheese.

Olive was an excellent student. After he left, she made cheese every day, perfecting her craft, expanding her line. After two years, it was her turn to go to Switzerland. She brought with her eight varieties of cheese. “Hans was teary-eyed,” Olive recalls. “He said, ‘I taught you how to make one cheese. Now you come back to me with eight kinds!’”

Today, Olive has 29 varieties of cheese.

At our cheese tasting, she named a few: Chevre, Chere with pineapples, goat’s milk Camembert, cow’s milk blue cheese, goat’s milk blue cheese, and Rosita, which is similar to the French Mont d’Or but named such because of its rosy tinge.

Her daughter Ingrid also makes cheese.

Ingrid volunteered to apprentice at Malagos when she was just 11. She is now in college, getting a degree in Food Technology. Her cheese is a semi-hard cheese infused with rosemary. It is sooo good. It was my second favorite of the night after the Chevre with pineapples. If you come across this variety, make sure to buy it. The taste of the rosemary lingers as you savor the cheese. It is not to be consumed with undeserving wine; make sure you have a bottle with corresponding character and depth.

Olive’s goat cheese, meanwhile, is named after Reggie Aspiras and is called the Regina.

Philippine Cheese

The challenge in the Philippines is to make European-style cheese despite the weather.

Olive’s advantage is her degree in Agriculture, thus she has no problem figuring out the right scientific processes. Like a chef who dreams of recipes, she dreams of what she calls protocols in making cheese.

She remembers that on a trip to Italy, she fell in love with a kind of gorgonzola that she knew she could not bring home because it would not last.

On the train from Milan to Switzerland, she created a protocol on how to replicate this cheese in Davao. She was able to recreate it using goat’s milk.

“If you follow the book, you will never be able to make cheese,” she reveals. “The book will say, ‘Keep the cheese at 25 degrees centigrade.’ But how will we do that when our temperature in Mindanao is at 30 degrees?” So she adjusted the protocols.

Peter Maurer, a Swiss cheesemaker who went to Davao with Hans, told her when she visited Switzerland, “I saw you doing a technique I never thought possible, but when I came back to Switzerland, I tried it and every time I do it, I whisper your name and remember that I learned this from a Filipino cheesemaker working at 38 degrees!”

“The Lord led the way,” she says.

Calling

Aside from Philippine Airlines, she now also supplies major hotel chains and high end restaurants from north to south, such as Hill Station in Baguio, Amanpulo, Bettina Osmeña’s Gourmet Corner in Forbes, and has distributors as well in Cebu.

She is in turn proud that she is able to contribute to Davao’s farm community. She buys milk from friends.

She runs a tight production team of only eight people but proudly shares that she has encouraged some of them to go to college and emphasizes that she shares the success with them. When she was named one of the Inspiring Filipina Entrepreneurs 2018 by Go Negosyo, she included the faces of her staff in their collateral. She also remembered to acknowledge them as she received her Asean Women Entrepreneur Award 2018 just recently in Bangkok, Thailand.

Most importantly, she continues to personally make cheese every day.

“I really love what I do,” she says.

This explains why even if she never went to any cooking school, Olive is able to make excellent cheese.

“The best learning is doing it every day and making mistakes every day,” she reflects.

Malagos Cheese is distributed in Manila by Piecofoods, Inc. For inquiries, call Karin Roelli Carmona at (02)892 3286 or (02) 752 3330 or e-mail [email protected]. In Davao, contact Olive P. Puentespina at (82) 226 4446 0917-700 1205 or e-mail : [email protected].

Malagos Cheese is also available at The Market, Tiffany Bldg., 156 L.P. Leviste Street, Salcedo Village, Makati City, (02) 8872993; and Gourmet Corner in front of Santuario de San Antonio, Forbes Park.