We owe today’s cheese to the shrewdness of French farmers who wanted to conceal the real amount of their milk production in order to reduce their tax burden. They did so at some point of time towards the end of the Middle Ages, transforming their milk into (easy-to-hide) small soft cheese discs that served as a source for minerals and fat during winter time up in the mountains. It took quite a while until this “hidden” cheese hit the markets, […]

Categories: Cheese University, France • Tags: Cheese, Food, France

This is the rare case of a cheese which literally has been “invented” like the steam engine or the iPod. French farmer Antoine Roussel, living some 40 kilometres west of Clermont-Ferrand in the Auvergne region, had the (somewhat weird) idea, to inoculate his cheese with mould fungus that appeared on his rye bread. Roussel must have been a handy man, obviously, because he also came up with the idea to pierce his cheese loaf in order to get some air inside […]

Categories: Cheese University, France • Tags: Cheese, Food, France

Here’s a to a winter cheese, production starts on 15th August and is allowed until 15th March but it is sold only from September through May. As a costumer in Paris you only see it when the cold season really has begun – and it is, in fact, a product so rich and creamy that you wouldn’t really think of having it on a hot summer night. It comes in a box made of spruce where it ripens and it […]

Categories: Cheese University, France • Tags: Cheese, Food, France