Manel Marcè

Manel Marcè is the grand­son of the last no­madic shep­herd in a fam­ily that for over six gen­er­a­tions herded the now en­dan­gered ripollesa breed of sheep. Manel de­cided to begin to milk the sheep (the breed pro­duces only half a litre of milk per day) to cul­ture nat­ural re­cuit, ren­net cheese, var­i­ous styles of cot­tage cheese, set cheese and yo­ghurt, all proudly bear­ing the brand of Mas Marcè or­ganic prod­ucts. Re­cently the com­pany cel­e­brated 11 years of fine cheese­mak­ing.

In 2009, the com­pany bought out Làctics Per­al­ada, and im­ple­mented or­ganic pro­duc­tion with an­other breed of sheep (La­caune), which pro­duces up to two litres a day more milk, so that they could in­crease their pro­duc­tion. Each brand uses dif­fer­ent pro­duc­tion sys­tems and has its own prod­ucts. The two brands –Mas Marcè and Ecolàctics Per­al­ada– fol­low the same phi­los­o­phy in pro­duc­ing or­ganic kefir, yo­ghurt, cheese and milk from their own sheep.

Their nat­ural cheeses, yo­ghurts and other lac­tic prod­ucts can be found in shops in Girona, Bany­oles, Figueres and Olot, and are bought di­rectly from the pro­duc­ers. All of the prod­ucts come from sheep graz­ing in their own pas­tures.

1- Over­alls, al­ways worn by Manel Marcè when mak­ing the prod­ucts.

2- Pas­teuriser, to elim­i­nate germs.

3- Cheese moulds.

4- Cul­ture vat, used to trans­form the sheep's milk into curd.

5- Sheep's wool, the pre­vi­ously cleaned wool in­su­lates the cheese al­low­ing it to be­come moist and de­velop flavour.

6- Kefir, made with or­ganic milk from Ecolàctics Per­al­ada sheep.

7- Strainer and cheese­cloth, used to make cheese curd and fresh cheese.

8- Ren­net this­tle, to make nat­ural cul­tures. All Marcè and Ecolàctics Per­al­ada prod­ucts are or­ganic and made with sheep's milk taken from sheep grazed on their own pas­tures.

9- Mor­tar, used to ex­tract the en­zyme from car­doon.

10- Salted cheese, using sea­wa­ter from Cap de Creus.

11- Or­ganic re­cuits from Ecolàctics Per­al­ada.

12- Prod­uct la­bels.

13- Glass jars and bot­tles used for yo­ghurt and other lac­tic prod­ucts by Ecolàctics Per­al­ada.

14- Yo­ghurt, ready to be sent to the sell­ers.

15- Yo­ghurt with jam, from Per­al­ada.