A North Wind Is Preferred For Cheesemaking; South Wind From The Sea Is Best For Maturing

I.  Does this great cheese, so glorious at best, needbutter?  It has been a deplorable butcommon custom in France to mix butterwith Roquefort, making a spread of it. In my Breton guise, as if hailing from the banks of the great RiverRance), I am used to eating butter under cheese (like the Normans), but mixingit, never. It spoils both.  As a possiblechild of Rouergat ancestry (near Roquefort there is the “le tout petit ruisseau nommé Rance," as another Rouergat describedit to me), I regard butter as quite unnecessary with any Roquefort I choose toeat; but some demand it to take the edge off such cheeses as the sharperalso-rans of the Gault-Milau race.

Roquefort

          As for wine, let any who have felt uneasy when accompanyingRoquefort with red wine other than port try sweet or very fruity drier whitewines.  Chateau d'Yquem is the perfect butextravagant counsel of some great gourmets. Closer to hand, and more reasonable, are Périgord’s Montbazillac,Banyuls and Rivesaltes rancis.  InEngland a sweet old dark ale or barley wine would do well, especially out ofdoors.

A fleurine in a Roquefort cave.   It is through the complex system of interconnected cracks or faults known as fleurines that the air runs through theRoquefort caves, maintaining constant conditions of wetness (95-99%) and temperature (7-11°C).

II. All the laiteries belongto the Roquefort caveproprietors.  Weather conditions arecharted daily, together with detailed timings of each stage of cheesemaking,and the amount of rennet and pennicilliumused.   Even the wind direction istested, by the wet-finger method, and recorded. A north wind is preferred forcheesemaking because it is cooling for the dairy; traditionally making might“wait for the wind.”  South wind from thesea is best for maturing, being the only one to penetrate the fleurines and create the necessarymovement of moisture and spores throughout the caves.  

A Roquefort cave

          Monsieur AlbertAlric told me that Papillon laiterieskeep similar charts and pointed out that if a customer complains and gives thedate and vat of marking, it is possible to trace the conditions in which theparticular cheese was made and all the details of its making to see whether thefault lay with the laiterie or the caves.   Dairy workers are paid for the whole year,although they do not have to work in the period when no milk is beingcollected.

A Roquefort laiterie 

          “There are eight stories below us,” Monsieur Laur said as weleft his office and started descending the old staircase down into the caves.   The servants’ staircase, it might be called,for people are only here to serve; the cheeses are the masters for whom thelift is reserved.  It is salutary tothink back to the days when they had to be carried up and down the stairs.Through the dimness, giving way to darkness away from the stair-shaft, only thecheeses seem to give off light against the deep, damp-saturated oaken uprightsand shelves.  Chill moisture is theconstant factor, together with the invisible spores, the two combining tocreate and nourish a greasy floor and stair covering (take sensible, non-slipshoes and wooly clothing, and do not dig your heels in).  On the south wall the naked rock is split bythe irregular fleurines, greatsinister cracks occasionally letting through the merest gleam from an upper,outer world.

1929 Château d’Yquem – 5 * -- Michael Broadbent

"A deep, rich amber, some [bottles] a rose tinted tawny; peaches and cream ride uppermost, also apricots, peeled sultanas, sometimes slightly chocolatey, always richly penetrating." 

"The perfect butextravagant counsel." 

Live a little, I say (hopefully).  The end is near.  If not, live a little (I say hopefully). Seana (below) clearly wants to.

From Patrick Rance:  The French Cheese Book.  Macmillan, London, 1989.