In November, Elaine and I had a long-awaited chance to visit with Jesus Pombo Lanza and his wife Yolanda at Poncelet (pronounced Ponthelet) in Madrid. The couple own and operate three very closely inter-connected cheese businesses under the Poncelet name. The original store which opened in 2005, is located at Calle Argensola and sells a carefully chosen selection of cheeses from across Spain together with a healthy representation of some of the best from France, Italy and Portugal. In addition, some years after the store opening, the couple decided to develop their own maturation caves and these are located away from the center of the city in a state of the art facility. There, there are several separate maturing rooms, each with a separate environment particularly suited to the type of cheeses it contains. Everything is spotlessly clean and modern and it is from this location that Poncelet's wholesale program is operated, primarily serving restaurants across the Madrid and beyond. The third and most recent business under the Poncelet umbrella is an amazing Cheese Bar. When I say Cheese Bar, trust me, you've not seen anything like it. Ever. So I'm going to cover this separately in another blog, but you can get a sense of the place by clicking here. Although cheese has been made in Spain for many centuries on a domestic and very local level, it is only in recent decades that commercial production has taken off thereby earning Spain a well deserved seat on the world stage. The reasons for their late arrival to the party are varied but mainly center around the turmoil created by the Spanish Civil War in the 1930's closely followed by the restrictive nature of the Franco regime which lasted until his death in 1975. That said, Spain has made up for lost time over the last thirty years and, with the help of hard working entrepreneurs such as Jesus and Yolanda are bringing