Serra da Estrela cheese

The undisputed queen of Portugal’s many first-rate cheeses is queijo da serra (serra cheese), made from the milk of ewes leisurely grazing in elevated pastures full of wild vegetation throughout the Estrela mountain region of central Portugal.

There’s a feeling in some parts of Portugal that bread is sacred – ‘pão é sagrado’, they say – and that it sustains life like the wafer taken at Communion.