Crafted in the Philippines: Malagos Farmhouse Cheese

When Olive Panaligan Puentespina met Marvin, Jolina, and Rica, it was kismet. Named after Philippine teen idols, the goats were brought home by her late husband, Bo, from his farm visits in 2001. The trio was the inspiration for her journey into cheesemaking, in a part of the world where conditions can be described as highly unsuitable. Olive has since defied the rule books, and for almost two decades, she has been successfully crafting distinctly Filipino, artisanal, European-style cheeses in Davao, in the southern region of the Philippine archipelago, under the renowned Malagos Farmhouse brand. 

 

Background

Olive’s cheesemaking journey started in late 2005 when Marvin, Jolina, and Rica multiplied and quickly became a herd of 30. She wanted a better way to preserve the constant supply of milk, and after trying to pasteurize and bottle the milk and even making soap, she thought of making cheese. Although her educational background was in animal science and nutrition, she knew nothing about dairy technology. She approached a former colleague at the University of the Philippines, Los Baños, and over a weekend, she learned how to make feta using tools found in her kitchen. Her first block of feta was overly salty because she followed a book recipe for cheese intended for export, but creating “a feta that she would love to eat,” as Olive puts it, became her mission. 

 

Cheesemaking in the Tropics: The Filipinized Way of Making Cheese

Jacqui Alleje of Rizal Dairy Farms provided insight into cheese production and gifted her a copy of a cheese processing book, which she initially found too technical. She almost gave up, but decided to persevere and continued to make cheese daily. An abundance of goat’s milk allowed her to experiment freely, and through trial and error and letting her instincts guide her, she slowly discovered how changing certain procedures led to different tastes, textures, and densities. 

 

The turning point came after a serendipitous encounter with Karin Roelli Carmona, a Swiss Filipino purveyor of fine ingredients and former president of the Cheese Club of the Philippines. Carmona provided the push she needed, and her willingness to collaborate, combined with Olive’s ingenuity, tenacity, and openness to constructive feedback, culminated in “a feta that she would love to eat.” As it turns out, it was also a feta that cheese aficionados loved because, in 2006, her goat cheese feta earned the coveted Cheese Club of the Philippines’ Cheese of the Month Award—the first Filipino goat cheese to have been given that accolade. This was the impetus she needed to forge ahead and continue her cheesemaking journey, and in 2008, the Malagos Farmhouse brand was born. 

Carmona was a staunch supporter of Olive’s products and promoted them further afield to her contacts in Switzerland. She provided samples of her goat cheese feta to her brother-in-law, who ran a Michelin-starred restaurant in St. Moritz, and her Camembert and blue cheese to Hanspring Wuthrich, a cheese master in Pontresina. Both were astounded at the quality of cheese she managed to produce, which was on a par with or even exceeded the quality of those manufactured by other European cheesemakers. To them, it was probably unimaginable that a Filipina cheesemaker was able to create European-style cheeses in the tropical Philippines, far from the alpine mountains of Switzerland. At the time, she had no formal schooling in cheesemaking, nor had she ever been to Europe! According to Olive, this meant that no one had told her that she could not make cheese in Philippine temperatures, so she was undeterred. 

 

When she finally took cheesemaking courses in the United States in 2014, no one had even heard of cheesemaking in the tropics, and she recalls her classmates would ask her questions instead of asking the instructor. She confirmed that she definitely knew how to make cheese, but it just wasn’t the same as everyone else’s. The European-style cheese she was making was uniquely her own and uniquely Filipino. It is what she calls her “Filipinized way of making cheese.” 

Her biggest break came when Carmona successfully brokered a one-ton order of her goat cheese feta for the national airline. When they requested a special cheese exclusively for first and business-class passengers, Olive created a blended goat and cow’s milk cheese in the style of chèvre with Philippine dried mango. This became the hands-down favorite in the Philippines, and she named it Mango Sublime. 

 

The Future of Malagos Farmhouse

When Olive’s daughter Ingrid apprenticed at age 11 in 2009, the future of Malagos Farmhouse cheese was secured for another generation. Ingrid is a natural at handling the curd, and she is a great source of pride for Olive. Ingrid has since completed a B.S. Food Technology degree from the University of the Philippines and has officially taken over from her mother. 

Under Ingrid’s tenure, Leon’s Lounge, a cheese-tasting room started in 2014 and named after Olive’s late son Leon David, will continue. Malagos Farmhouse will also continue to adhere to their ethos of using only locally sourced milk and native Philippine fruits to produce their Filipino cheeses. They will carry on sharing knowledge in food safety, animal production, and pasture management with farmers, and providing opportunities for local people, uplifting the lives of women, and celebrating teamwork.

Malagos Farmhouse plans to expand, and to accomplish this, their product offering has been streamlined from about 30 cheese varieties pre-pandemic down to 16. They also aim to produce a line of affordable cheeses of the same quality their ever-growing clientele is accustomed to. They realize this will be challenging because accessing cheaper milk is still difficult. The Philippine dairy industry is valued at Php 1B annually, and it imports 99% of its requirements. The government has been promoting dairy farming, but milk production in warm climates will always be lower, hence expensive. Olive would like unused land in higher altitudes converted to grazing land and made more accessible to help address this issue.

Even though Olive has stepped away from Malagos Farmhouse to manage her late husband’s fertilizer business, she can’t stay away from the cheese room, her happy place. She suits up once in a while to make a few hundred liters of blue cheese, a cheese that was her favorite when she was a panel taster at the University of Los Baños. She enjoys making blue cheese because it is so temperamental and, therefore, keeps her on her toes. 

 

Philippine Cheeses from Malagos Farmhouse

The distinctly Filipino flavor of Malagos Farmhouse cheese comes from the source—goat’s milk that comes from Olive’s own herd of Anglo Nubian, La Mancha, and Saanen, and hybrids from crossing these breeds. The cow’s milk is sourced from a friend because of economies of scale. The grass the goats and cows feed on is different from anywhere else, so the flavor of the milk is distinctive. And Olive only uses locally sourced fruits and herbs.

Malagos Farmhouse produces 16 cheese variants in small quantities. Two of the more unusual cheeses are:

Pineapple Sublime

Part of the Sublime range of cheese, a blended goat and cow’s milk cheese in the style of chèvre with Philippine dried pineapple

Borracho

A goat’s milk cheese aged for 5 months in the Philippines’ San Miguel Brewery’s Cerveza Negra, a dark lager

 

Olive recommends the following pairings for three of their products:

La Regina

A bloomy rind goat’s milk cheese paired with Les Jamelles Les Petites, Jamelles Rosé, or William Fèvre La Misión Chardonnay

Ingrid’s Rosemary

A cooked curd cow’s milk cheese aged with fresh rosemary (the first large batch of cheese made by Ingrid) paired with Comte de Tassin Bordeaux Rouge

Pesto Sublime

The pesto variant from the Sublime range paired with Chateau Mezain Sauvignon Blanc

 

A Filipina Pioneer 

Is there a type of cheese that cannot be made in the Philippines? According to Olive there isn’t and she has made them all—fresh, aged, smeared, veined, bloomy rind, aged in spirits, brined, and rustic. She says she must just be hardheaded, but it’s her resolve and singular focus that have made her a trailblazer. Without a doubt, by pursuing European-style cheesemaking in the Philippines, she has established herself as a rebel Filipina cheesemaker, not letting the hostile cheesemaking conditions of the tropical Philippines stop her. She threw out the rule book that says you can’t make European-style cheeses in the Philippines because of the high humidity and temperature. She is instrumental in the growing appreciation of cheese, in particular artisanal cheese, in a country where processed, boxed cheese and cheese spreads are commonplace. The popularity of Malagos Farmhouse cheese has also renewed interest in dairy farming as an industry. 

Her hard work has not gone unnoticed, and she’s the recipient of the ASEAN Women Entrepreneur Award in 2018 and Asia’s Most Influential PH in 2021. But perhaps most importantly, because of Olive, Filipinos now have access to locally produced, top-quality, world-class artisanal cheeses.