Dura is a raw sheep's milk hard cheese from Oviken Ost, a small family dairy in Jämtland, Sweden. It won gold at the World Cheese Awards in a category dominated by Spanish and Italian producers, a result its makers still call one of the proudest moments in the farm's history.
The cheese carries an unusual flavor signature for a hard sheep's milk cheese: alongside the expected saltiness, tasters consistently pick up notes of coconut and fresh minerals, a combination that sets Dura apart from the nuttier profile of most Mediterranean sheep's milk hard cheeses.
In This Article
The Medieval Farm Behind Dura
Dura comes from Gården Åkern, a farm in the village of Häggen on a ridge above Lake Storsjön, about 23 kilometers from Östersund, that has been cultivated since medieval times. The Åkermo family has owned it since the 1350s, making Oviken Ost one of the oldest continuously farmed properties behind any cheese in this guide.
Kristina Åkermo, a veterinarian, and Robert Åkermo, an agronomist who also works as a building consultant for the regional Agricultural Society, spent roughly 1995 to 1999 studying dairies across Sweden and northern Europe before starting their own. Their first cheeses came out of a rented mobile dairy in 2003.
A permanent dairy building followed in 2005, built with an investment of around 3 to 3.5 million Swedish kronor.
"Vi jobbar så naturligt det bara går," Kristina Åkermo has said of the farm's approach: we work as naturally as possible. The farm's dairy-sheep herd, built almost entirely from scratch by the couple, has grown from roughly 300 to around 400 East Friesian ewes over the years, one of the largest such herds in the Nordic region.
Cows and goats round out the farm's animals, and their milk goes into other Oviken Ost cheeses. The chalky, calcium-rich soil around Storsjön feeds pasture that the Åkermos credit for much of their milk's quality.
Breeding a Dairy Sheep Herd From Scratch
Sweden had no ready supply of dairy sheep genetics when the Åkermos started, so they built their own herd by crossing Nordic ewe breeds, including Svea and Gotland sheep, with purebred East Friesian rams. "We couldn't get the sheep's milk we wanted at first, so we began crossing Nordic ewes with purebred East Friesian dairy rams," Robert Åkermo has explained.
They imported semen from a Dutch East Friesian ram in 2003, then bought six purebred East Friesian rams from Finland in 2008 to keep improving the line. Kristina's breeding criteria were practical: ewes needed to be easy to milk, manageable, and able to lamb outdoors.
The payoff shows up directly in the milk. East Friesian sheep's milk runs 6 to 7 percent protein and fat, nearly double a typical cow's or goat's milk, which is why it takes only about 4 liters of sheep's milk to make a kilogram of cheese, versus roughly 10 liters of cow's milk for the same yield.
How Oviken Ost Makes Dura
Oviken Ost makes all of its cheese from unpasteurized milk, a choice the dairy treats as central to its identity rather than a shortcut. "We use only untreated milk and make cheese following old methods," Kristina Åkermo has said, describing an approach built around working with the milk's natural microorganisms instead of suppressing them.
Dura is pressed into its shape and cured for at least two months before sale, the same 60-day minimum that many food-safety authorities use as the aging threshold for raw-milk cheese. The dairy adds no wax coating and few additives, relying on the natural rind that forms during aging to protect the paste.
Oviken Ost produces roughly 20 to 25 tons of cheese a year across its full range. Only about 8 tons of that comes from the farm's own sheep.
The rest is made with cow's milk bought from a neighboring farm, Västgården, since one small flock can only supply so much raw milk on its own.
What Dura Tastes Like
Cut into a wedge, Dura shows a hard, dense, pale ivory paste with small eyes scattered unevenly through the body, closer to a firm alpine-style cheese than to a crumbly aged Pecorino. The fat content runs around 30 percent, contributing to a texture that stays dense rather than dry.
The flavor itself is mild and salty at first bite, then opens into the coconut and fresh mineral notes that reviewers single out as Dura's signature. That mineral quality tracks with the calcium-rich pasture the sheep graze on, a link the Åkermos point to directly when explaining what makes their milk distinctive.
Those scattered eyes matter to the eating and not only to the look. A slice tends to break along them, so a thin cut comes away with a lightly pitted face rather than a flat one.
Temperature moves the coconut note more than anything else you can do to the cheese. Cold from the fridge the salt leads and the paste eats tight, and twenty minutes on the counter is enough for the sweeter, mineral side to arrive.
Chew it rather than waiting for it to melt. At around 30 percent fat the paste does not slacken on the tongue the way a richer cheese does, and the mineral finish shows up late in the bite.
Dura's Gold Medal at the World Cheese Awards
In 2016, Dura won gold at the World Cheese Awards, held that year in San Sebastián, Spain, as part of the city's year as European Capital of Culture. The competition drew 3,021 cheeses from 31 countries, judged by 266 judges from 26 nations working in teams of four.
Robert Åkermo called the win especially meaningful because the competition took place in what he described as "fårostarnas Mecka," the Mecca of sheep's milk cheese, a region famous for Idiazábal and other Basque sheep cheeses.
That year's overall World Champion was a Norwegian blue cheese, Kraftkar, from a small farm near Tingvoll.
Dura's own win came in the sheep's-milk category, alongside a second Swedish medalist, a goat cheese called Löfstalund. Oviken Ost has reportedly won gold at the World Cheese Awards on three separate occasions, though the other two wins aren't as well documented as Dura's.
Dura on Some of the World's Best-Known Tables
Beating established Spanish and Italian producers on their own turf gave Oviken Ost credibility well beyond Jämtland. Multiple independent accounts place the dairy's cheeses on the menus of Noma in Copenhagen, Stockholm's Grand Hôtel and Operakällaren, and the late Fäviken, chef Magnus Nilsson's internationally acclaimed restaurant in nearby Järpen, Jämtland, before it closed in 2019.
Closer to home, Oviken Ost's cheeses, including Dura and its blue-veined sibling Vera, have reached delicatessens and cheese shops across Sweden, and the company's own materials state that its hard cheese Blenda has been served at Nobel Prize celebration events, though that specific claim comes from the producer rather than an independently confirmed source.
How to Serve Dura
Dura works as a table cheese sliced thin, or shaved over a dish the way a Nordic cook might use a firm alpine cheese. Its dense texture holds up well to a mandoline or a sturdy vegetable peeler, producing shavings that show off the paste's pale color and scattered eyes.
Shave it straight from the fridge. A cold, firm paste feeds a mandoline cleanly and curls, while a wedge that has been sitting out for an hour crumbles against the blade.
It also grates well enough to finish a soup or a bowl of grains, standing in for a hard grating cheese without cheddar's sharpness or Parmesan's intense umami. Because the flavor is milder than those two, Dura works best as a finishing touch rather than a dominant cooking ingredient.
Add it off the heat in any case. A dense, low-moisture paste tightens and goes grainy in a simmering liquid, so shave it over the finished bowl instead of stirring it into the pot.
For a board, cut short slices across the wedge rather than long ones down its length. Each slice then carries a strip of rind, and that dry outer edge eats firmer and more concentrated than the paste behind it.
What to Drink With Dura
A crisp Nordic lager or a dry white wine with some minerality, such as an Albariño, matches Dura's own mineral character well. A light-bodied red also works if beer or white wine isn't an option, as long as it doesn't overpower the cheese's mild saltiness.
Leave the oaked and the sweet bottles alone. Wood and residual sugar both sit on top of the mineral finish, which is the part of Dura worth paying a specialty price for.
At a table without alcohol, sparkling water with a real mineral edge does the job better than a soft drink. Sugar flattens the cheese's salt and leaves the finish with nothing to push against.
Dura vs Manchego
Both are firm, aged sheep's milk cheeses, which makes Manchego the most natural comparison for anyone deciding between the two.
| Dura | Manchego | |
|---|---|---|
| Origin | Jämtland, Sweden | La Mancha, Spain |
| Milk | Raw sheep's milk | Raw or pasteurized sheep's milk, PDO-regulated |
| Aging | At least 2 months | 2 months to 2 years |
| Flavor | Mild, salty, coconut and mineral notes | Nutty, tangy, buttery, sharper with age |
| Availability | Mainly within Sweden | Widely available internationally |
The gap between them widens with age. Manchego is sold anywhere from two months to two years and sharpens across that range, while Dura is a two-month cheese, so a young Manchego is the fair comparison rather than a well-aged one.
Choose Dura for its distinctive mineral character and to support a small family farm. Choose Manchego when wide availability and a more familiar nutty flavor matter more.
What to Use Instead When Dura Isn't Available
Manchego is the closest widely stocked substitute in texture and milk type, though it leans nuttier and tangier than Dura's milder, more mineral profile. A young Pecorino Toscano works as a gentler alternative, since it shares Dura's moderate saltiness without Pecorino Romano's sharper bite.
Match the age as well as the animal. The older Manchego wheels overshoot Dura's mildness by a wide margin, and the youngest piece on the counter sits far closer to it.
Neither swap brings the coconut note, and there is no honest way to build it back. Treat the substitution as a match of milk and texture and let the flavor land where it lands.
Buying Dura
Dura is a genuinely small-batch cheese. Outside Sweden it is difficult to find at retail, and within Sweden it has historically been sold through Oviken Ost's own online shop, a handful of named specialty cheese shops including Falbygdens Ost and Ostbutiken.se, and directly to restaurants rather than through mainstream supermarkets.
One honest caveat: a small family dairy like this can change availability or ownership without much notice, and at least one source questioned whether Oviken Ost was still actively producing cheese as of this writing. That status could not be independently confirmed either way, so treat "how to buy" details here as a starting point to verify directly with a Swedish cheese shop or the dairy itself, not a guarantee of current stock.
Because production is limited to what one family farm's herd can support, expect farmstead specialty pricing rather than supermarket rates, and expect to plan ahead if ordering from outside Sweden.
Nutrition and Safety
Dura runs around 30 percent fat, typical of a dense, hard sheep's milk cheese. Because it is made from raw milk, it is aged a minimum of two months, the standard threshold many food-safety regulators use before allowing raw-milk cheese to be sold.
Pregnant women and others who avoid raw-milk products should check with a doctor before eating Dura, even though its aging period meets common raw-milk safety thresholds.
Storing Dura
A hard, low-moisture paste is forgiving in a fridge, and the natural rind does most of the protecting on its own. What the cheese cannot handle is being sealed against plastic, which holds in the moisture the rind is trying to shed.
A properly wrapped wedge keeps for several weeks in the refrigerator thanks to its hard, low-moisture paste. Once cut, use it within two to three weeks for the best texture.
Put it in fresh paper each time you cut into it. The exposed face gives up moisture much faster than the rind does, and paper that has already taken up a cut's worth of it stops doing anything.
