2020-06-04 Thu

France Post issued a postage stamp featuring one of the authentic culinary heritage – Roquefort. Issued on the 27th of March 2006, the stamp comes in the denomination of 0.53 Euro. Roquefort is known in France as the king of cheeses.

Roquefort is a sheep milk cheese from Southern France, and together with Gorgonzola, Bleu d'Auvergne, Danablu, and Stilton is one of the world's best known blue cheeses. The cheese is white, tangy, crumbly and slightly moist, with distinctive veins of blue mold. It has a characteristic fragrance and flavor with a notable taste of butyric acid; the blue veins provide a sharp tang.

Legend has it that the cheese was discovered when a youth, eating his lunch of bread and ewes' milk cheese, saw a beautiful girl in the distance. Abandoning his meal in a nearby cave, he ran to meet her. When he returned a few months later, the mold (Penicillium roqueforti) had transformed his plain cheese into Roquefort. Throughout its history, it has conquered the palaces and enraptured the palates of kings and emperors. On 4 June 1411, the French king Charles VI granted a monopoly for the ripening of the Roquefort cheese to the people of Roquefort-Sur-Soulzon in their caves as they had been doing for centuries.

Image Source: colnect.com