mmmmm.....cheese ....

So anyway, I've been making noises for a while about going to see the cheese caves at Roquefort. The cheese itself is pretty good, a nice French blue, and very popular over here, but there's a mystique about it, as there is about so much of French food, I mean, the cheeses are ripened in real caves in the hillside ... oh come on, it's a must see! They must have finally got sick of the nagging because E and A agreed to visit the Roquefort caves today!

Roquefort is north of here, about 45 minutes, up in the Causses de Larzac, strange big hills, with flat tops. This is where genuine Roquefort cheese is made, from milk from Lacaune sheep grazed within a specific area. The cheese is ripened in caves under and around the village, ventilated by natural shafts to encourage the growth of the natural penicillium that gives the cheese its flavour. It's AOC (appellation d'origine controllee), which means that it is produced under a rigorous set of standards, and it was the first French cheese to be awarded AOC status in 1925. (I'm putting a lot of facts in this post because they wouldn't let me take any photos of the cheese).

The excitement was pretty high as we drove up to the village, squealing excitedly at the sight of sheep (sheep!! just like home!! we NEVER see sheep down in the valley where we live!!), and gasping as large refrigerated cheese trucks swooshed past us down the hill. (We knew they were cheese trucks because they had large pictures of cheese on the sides!!)

The visit was pretty good value - 3 euros each, free for kids. It started with an animated diorama thing that showed how earthquakes had pushed the rocks around and formed the caves and the landscape and then we had a 'son et lumiere' 'spectacle' which as usual involved a lot of eerie operatic-style singing and flashing lights but also told the legend - a shepherd was about to eat his lunch of rye bread and ewe's milk curd when he spotted a woman that he liked the look of, so he left his lunch in a cave and followed her. After a few days he got a bit hungry so he came back in search of his tucker, but found it had gone mouldy. Urgh! But he was so hungry that he tasted it anyway and to his delight, found that it was delicious!! Roquefort cheese was born!

Then there was a video showing how the cheese was made - it's actually made in gleaming stainless steel factories, and just matured in the caves, and that's where we went next ... to the cheese, to the cheese ...

And there they were, all cute and round and soft looking, slightly smelly like puppies sleeping innocently in front of the heater... To see them, go here and click on 'visit the cellars', then click on the little screen picture at the bottom left - you'll get a bigger picture of the cheeses that you can move around.

Drooling, we watched some of the cabaniers (women who turn and wrap the cheeses) wrapping their charges in special aluminium foil to stop them maturing too soon... and then it was off to the tasting room ... ABOUT TIME!! Of course the three varieties they produce at Societe were all delicious, even my blue-cheese hating husband liked them, and we of course came away with a massive slab of the 'Templiers'. It was creamy, tasty, and very very good ... We've called him Emilian and any minute we expect him to burst out of the fridge wearing a kilt (anyone else out there a Terry Pratchett fan?).

Here's a gratuitous scenery picture taken from the Societe des Caves carpark..