Lartusho

Product description

Traditional Guda Cheese Lartusho is made from freshly collected cow’s raw milk in Tusheti, from May to August inclusive. The originality of the cheese is conditioned primarily by high quality of the milk yielded from Tushetian cow grazing on alpine pastures of Tusheti.

 

Lartusho is made from raw milk, which is filtered in a double strainer laid out with different healing herbs:     nettle, suck-bottle and feather-grass. The filtered milk is mixed with the preliminary prepared rennet and in order to keep in the warmth it is covered with a felt cloak. In an hour, the curd is stirred up and kept covered again with the felt cloak. Thereafter, the curd is squeezed to release it from the whey, the remaining soft cheese is cut and wrapped by a special sackcloth, by means of which the cheese mass is well sqeezed and shaped into round cylinders. The formed sackcloth-wrapped block of cheese is put then on the cheese board and covered with a felt cloak for 2 hours, following which the cheese is taken to the cheese room and covered again with the felt cloak to keep it in the warmth for 2 days. After that the cheese is placed in a preliminary prepared guda (a sack made of sheep skin); four to five blocks of cheese are placed in the sack and are covered with layers of salt. Thereafter the cheese guda is moved to a cheese room and covered again with the felt cloak to keep it warm for 2 days. The cheese is rolled several times a day in order that the fresh cheese is well shaped and equally salted.

 

The ripening of the cheese Lartusho in the guda will take minimum 60 days, after which the cheese will be ready for sale. The taste is slightly pungent and sour, spicy and medium salted. 

 

Lartusho is the appellation of origin. Members of the Co-op “Alaznistavi” named this cheese after their native village of Gometseri gorge, the cow wintering place of Dochu - the wonderful monument of the Georgian highland architecture.

This web-site has been produced with the assistance of the European Union, Oxfam and Biological Farming Association ELKANA. The contents of this web-site are the sole responsibility of Cooperative "Alaznistavi" and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the European Union, Oxfam or Biological Farming Association ELKANA