Manchego cheese is made from sheep's milk and is a thick cylinder with sharp edges. It appears in Cervantes' novel Don Quixote, written in the early 16th century, but the Romans had been enjoying this cheese long before that. The fact that Manchego cheese has survived the centuries and become so famous is partly due to the thick rind that serves as a casing.
Its sides are ornamented with interwoven lines reminiscent of esparto mats, the fibrous plants used in the past to shape cheese. The shapes used today can reproduce this ancestral pattern.