Roquefort, a culinary legend with well-kept secrets

It is one of the best kept mysteries. A culinary legend that sleeps up to 11 floors underground. Only seven manufacturers in the world have unlocked its secrets. From thousand-year-old cellars where it patiently dresses up in blue, right down to our plates, Roquefort has not ceased to amaze. The story begins in Aveyron: 750,000 purebred ewes Lacaune y follow a three-star outdoor diet.

It takes 12 liters of whole milk to make a Roquefort and then, great know-how. “The legend of Roquefort is the famous shepherd who forgot his cheese and his piece of bread in a cave to run behind a shepherdess, and who found his bread moldy and his cheese covered with mould”, says Jacky Carles, master Roquefort cheese refiner for Société Roquefort. Legend or not, it is its mold that continues to make this cheese famous. A quarter of the Roquefort produced around this small village in Aveyron is sold abroad.