This year, Llagar de Colloto, a restaurant in Oviedo, Spain, paid 30,000 euros for a piece of Cabrales cheese made by hand from cow and goat milk. And it is matured for ten months in a cave in the Los Picos de Europa mountains, at an altitude of 1,500 meters above sea level.

Created by the cheese factory Los Puertos from Poo de Cabrales, the piece of cheese weighs 2.2 kg (4.85 pounds). If converted into Indonesian Rupiah, the piece of cheese is equivalent to US$32,800 or worth Rp499 million (with an exchange rate of Rp15,224 per US dollar).

The judges chose the cheese as the best cheese out of 15 producers participating in the contest and it is the most sought-after cheese in the next auction. "We know that we have good cheese, but we also know that it is very difficult to win," said Guillermo Pendás Bada, the maker of the winning cheese. (Photo: YouTube/EL PAIS)

In 2018, this restaurant paid 14,300 euros for a piece of cheese that won the contest, and a year later, the restaurant spent 20,500 euros on the best-valued cheese. Now, this restaurant once again spends a significant amount on a piece of Cabrales cheese and sets a world record in the process.

Cabrales is a natural cheese made by hand, either from raw cow's milk or a mixture of two or three types of milk, namely cow, sheep, and goat. Cabrales cheese is matured in natural caves in Picos de Europa for several months. The humid conditions support the development of molds such as penicillin, which give it its characteristic blue-green patterns and spots.