Kimberly Behr
C H E E S E   A N T H O L O G Y

Roquefort

By Edward Behr

appellation: Appellation d’Origine Protégée (AOP)

place: especially the department of Aveyron but also parts of neighboring Tarn, Hérault, Lozère, Aude, and a bit of Gard, all in the former province of Languedoc, southern France

milk: ewe (Lacaune breed), raw

type: semisoft, blue

size: a flat drum, diameter 19 to 20 cm (7.5 to nearly 8 in), height 8.5 to 11.5 cm (3.3 to 4.5 in), and weight 2.5 to 3 kilos (5.5 to 6.6 pounds)

production: seven producers (eight plants altogether), two of which continue to use hand methods; total production around 16,000 metric tonnes each year, which is about six million cheeses — but demand and production have been slowly falling for years

related cheeses: none, in taste

look for: a cheese that in a slice shows a clean white or ivory color, untinged with yellow or tan, together with clear blue or blue-green (but not gray) mold

taste: A pleasing saltiness should be in balance with a distinct but not sharp acidity; the savoriness, including flavors of blue mold, should be accompanied by something sweet, nutty, mushroomy with a little sheep, a little sheep pen, and no more than a touch of pepperiness. The texture of a cheese in prime condition is buttery smooth.

drinks: Sauternes is the wine most frequently recommended to go with Roquefort, and when you taste the two together for the first time, the novelty is exciting: the wine’s sweetness contrasts powerfully with the cheese’s salty savor. The wine is too rich to be refreshing, but that’s true of all the wines that are most interesting with Roquefort. Other, perhaps superior sweet possibilities include Coteaux du Layon, traditional Banyuls, and Muscat vin doux naturel. No matter the choice, a younger Roquefort goes with a younger, fresher wine, while an older, stronger cheese calls for a more evolved, concentrated one.

 

The most celebrated of all the world’s great cheeses originated among the hot, dry limestone plateaux, called causses, of the former province of Rouergue (now, essentially the department of Aveyron) in the south of the France. The climate, although too dry for cattle or even vines, was excellent for hardy sheep, which today all belong to the regional Lacaune breed, source of the milk for Roquefort. The modern appellation, however, is much larger and more varied than the original area, and not all of it is especially dry.

Much more important than the above-ground terroir are the historic cool caves — essential for turning the cheeses blue — located beneath the village of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon, which is at the edge of the small Combalou Plateau, itself a causse. No one knows when cheesemaking in the area began. It might already have been going on for centuries in 1070, when the records of the Abbey at Conques show that each Roquefort cave paid the abbey an annual rent of two cheeses, though it’s hard to say whether those cheeses would be recognizable to us as Roquefort. In 1411, Charles VI, observing that the caves were “very cold in summer,” said the cheese was the one thing of value that could be produced in the village. The name was worth enough that cheeses from other places were passed off as “Roquefort,” and in 1550 the Parlement of Toulouse gave the village the exclusive right to the name, setting fines for violators. In 1925, Roquefort was granted France’s first appellation for any food or drink.

The caves aren’t just cool and damp; their special value lies in their fleurines. These naturally occurring vertical breaks in the rocks bring in a very slow, steady flow of cool, moist air. The word fleurine (according to the Felibrige of Frédéric Mistral) comes from the Occitan flouri, meaning “to cover with mold.” Elsewhere in the broad region, scattered caves with fleurines were also used to age cheese — two of them still are, for Bleu des Causses — but only the village of Roquefort has such a large concentration of caves with the needed temperature and atmosphere.

The blue mold, Penicillium roqueforti, requires oxygen, which once upon a time would have entered a cheese only through naturally occurring openings in its surface (as today with the cheeses Gamoneu in Spain and Castelmagno in Italy). But for Roquefort, since at least the 19th century air has been introduced to the whole of each wheel by piercing it with needles. You can see the parallel blue traces in a vertical slice. Because the edges of the cheese are initially very salty, mold doesn’t grow there and they remain white. Otherwise the mold should be distributed more or less evenly, and there should be more white than blue, so you can taste the two separately as well as together.

Into the 1970s, the blue molds were wild. Round loaves of rye bread were placed in the caves to grow thoroughly moldy, then they were dried and powdered and mixed with the milk or curd. The wild molds, however, were unpredictable. Not all were equal or even good, and among them were unwanted organisms that could damage the taste. A tiny number of wheels were wonderful — more wonderful, I’ve heard, than any Roquefort today — but others were all too strong and some wheels had such off-flavors that today they would be considered unsalable. The producers now have much more control over the process, starting with the quality of the milk and including the mold. Just two producers still put rye loaves in their caves, seeding the bread with their chosen strain of mold.

Hundreds of strains were identified and the better ones selected at the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique laboratory at Aurillac, about two and a half hours north of Roquefort in the department of Cantal (home of the great cow’s-milk cheeses Cantal and Salers). The lab now produces penicillium for all of France’s AOP blue cheeses, and in theory the strains for each are indigenous to its region and caves. Aurillac produces four strains for Roquefort, with most producers using just one. Rather than rely on a supply from Aurillac, some producers, including Société, the largest by far, maintain their own penicillium.

“When you’ve chosen a strain of penicillium, you’ve already chosen a final taste,” the technical head of a Roquefort firm once told me. The dominant strains are chosen not just for flavor but also for their dark blue color, which appeals to consumers. Yet a darker color isn’t linked to stronger or better flavor, and one superior strain with a lighter hue is used in Société’s brand “Caves Baragnaudes” and Papillon’s “Révélation.” Not that those cheeses are considered the very best, but their texture is softer and their blue flavor is admired for being less aggressive and perhaps more refined.

The temperature in a Roquefort cave, about 8 to 10 degrees C (46 to 50 degrees F), remains nearly constant through the year. The cheeses used to spend from one to four months in the caves, in response to seasonally varying demand. The mold could be slowed by salting the cheeses more heavily (too much salt was a common criticism), or it could be speeded up by piercing the wheels with more holes and putting them in a slightly warmer cave. Today under the AOP rules, the minimum that a cheese must spend in the caves is a mere 14 days, and rarely does a wheel spend more than 21 days. Even that short period, however, is long enough for the blue mold to become established. Next, in an old practice, to prevent the mold from advancing to the point where it overwhelms other flavors, each cheese is tightly wrapped in foil to exclude oxygen. Then the cheeses are transferred to refrigerated storage at just above or even just below freezing, where they continue to mature for several months or longer. The use of deep cold has been common practice for about a century. (Mechanical refrigeration began to be installed in the caves in 1873.)

One reason for the cold is that the ewes give milk from only about mid-November to mid-June — during almost half the year no cheese is made at all. And at a certain moment in April, the cheese supply may suddenly jump from nine months old down to just four months. The primary tool for preventing a big rupture in taste is a frigid temperature.

The cold, slow evolution also has the advantage of producing more complex aromas, although it can cause problems. The caves’ natural temperatures favor more proteolysis — breakdown of protein, which gives a creamy consistency along with sweeter and nuttier flavors. Greater cold favors more lipolysis — breakdown of fats, which gives stronger flavors. Cold slows down both kinds of evolution, but it has less effect on lipolysis, one of whose products is the piquant bite that appears toward the end of aging. (Producers limit that by choosing a less lipolytic, thus more proteolytic, strain of penicillium, by using cleaner milk with fewer lipolytic organisms, and by avoiding physical damage to the milk that comes from sloshing or pumping, which breaks open fat globules, allowing lipolysis to start even before cheesemaking does.) If practicality allowed, a somewhat less chilly, faster aging might yield sweeter, more refined flavors.

Because Roquefort is one of the more vulnerable cheeses, readily suffering from being kept too long, too warm, or too dry, it isn’t likely to improve after it leaves the village. A cheese in top condition is more likely to be found at a shop that especially cares about Roquefort, and it’s best eaten on the day or within a few days of when you buy it.

Roquefort’s seven current producers are Carles, Combes (Le Vieux Berger), Gabriel Coulet, Les Fromageries Occitanes, Papillon, Société, and Vernières Frères. Société produces about 60 percent of all Roquefort and is owned by Lactalis, which, measuring by the quantity of milk handled annually, is the world’s largest dairy company. Carles, the second to smallest Roquefort producer, is the only one that both uses hand methods and puts its rye bread to mold in the caves. Its cheese is almost invariably the highest ranked. But that suggests too simple a cause and effect. Excellent cheese comes from other producers, including Papillon, which also puts rye loaves in its caves and since 1972 has produced a fine organic Roquefort in addition to its cheese from conventional milk.

As much as the producers aim at control and consistency, different wheels of Roquefort — coming from milk from different terroirs, made by different methods using different blue molds and caves, and matured for shorter or longer times — present different tastes. The variety is clear if you compare several examples side by side (which takes some trouble, because a shop usually offers just one kind). Roquefort shouldn’t be too strong or too sharp. There should be just a little pepper and no more than a suggestion of a nail-polish edge, which, coming from one particular strain of mold, shows up late in the aging. The cheese should be moist and creamy — spreadably soft. And where sandy granules are a positive sign in a well-aged Parmigiano-Reggiano or Gouda, they almost always indicate a Roquefort past its prime, although you might forgive the crystals in an especially fine older example.

As a Roquefort consumer, you accept the age of the cheese that’s available when you buy it. In summer, at least in France, the wheels in shops are commonly young. A cheese bought in fall might have been made in April or May, the best period for milk. And a cheese bought in winter is likely to be older and stronger. Some people surely prefer a younger, milder cheese, and a good Roquefort gives pleasure at any stage. But a connoisseur in the region once told me that Roquefort starts to be interesting only at eight months. And the best cheeses continue to improve for 12, 14, exceptionally 16 months; I’ve heard of an 18-month-old cheese still being very good. But most Roquefort lacks that potential, and as the cheeses grow older their shortcomings become more and more apparent. Only a small number of the very best wheels benefit from prolonged aging.●

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