CHAPTER ONE - BLANQUETTE DE LIMOUX


The longest carnival in the world

I am bewitched by the masked dancer. His glittering wand is longer than that owned by any wizard. He glides in my direction and reaches out a white-gloved hand to remove my cap. I know what is coming next and I dare not move. With his other hand, he pats me on the head and I can feel the weight of the confetti. Shredded paper is light, so I know I have been baptised with an excessively generous handful. The dancer replaces my cap and resumes his slow, mesmerising steps. Self-consciously I remove my cap and shake my head. Confetti cascades to the ground. I glance around me and am reassured to see that all my fellow spectators look as if they have wandered outside in a snowstorm.
     My dancer is still within touching distance and I stare at his mask, curious to know if there is a genuine smile behind those blue painted lips. Maybe the eyes will tell me, but through the lozenges of the eyeholes the eyelids appear to be closed in a moment of transcendental bliss. My location suggests a more secular possibility: perhaps this gentleman has simply drunk too much Blanquette de Limoux. Or perhaps I should say ‘lady’, for in truth I can no more tell the age or sex of the person behind the mask than I can judge his or her state of inebriation.
     I admire the costumes of the other dancers in this particular troupe. Each outfit is made from two colours of fabric, one of them always cream and the other selected from a dazzling palette that includes gold, purple, scarlet, aquamarine and French navy blue. All the costumes are cut in the same style: a four-pointed jester’s hat, a long tunic with a wide collar that covers the shoulders and upper arms, plain cream trousers, and surprisingly everyday shoes. I note that all the dancers have chosen comfort over style, and either the women of Limoux have unusually large feet and a penchant for thick black leather, or this lot are mostly men.
     Two accessories are essential to the dancer’s performance. First is the wand, around two metres long (six feet six inches), and made from reeds gathered on the Mediterranean coast just after the first frosts of January. Second is the confetti bag, coloured to match each dancer’s costume, long enough to sling over the shoulder, and large enough to hold several kilograms of shredded paper at each end. Eight tonnes will be used during this year’s carnival, and I idly watch one of the dancers toss a handful skywards. The cloud of paper hesitates on high before deciding to drift back to earth. Nothing happens quickly at the Carnival of Limoux.
     Venice may boast the oldest and Rio the largest, but Limoux claims to have the longest carnival in the world. Around 600 dancers belonging to 30 different troupes ensure that these festivities can be sustained three times a day every weekend - plus Mardi Gras – from the end of January until early April.
The Carnival of Limoux is unusually compact. Here, there are no carnival floats, no long parades. Events unfold in the intimacy of the medieval square with a graceful beauty which has been described as a miraculous combination of immobility and movement. Spectators have all the time in the world to take photographs and admire the masquerade because they themselves are an integral part of the performance.
     Each procession starts at one of the cafés on the square and continues to the next, and there are so many watering-holes beneath the arcades, the road is never a long one. I have been observing this particular troupe – Les Pitchouns – since they started in the southern corner of the square. They have taken 20 minutes to advance 40 metres to the steps of Le Grand Café, and their dance would be soporific if it were not for the loud rhythmic music of the band – brass, woodwind and percussion.
     A purple-clad performer pauses at the top of the café steps and waves at the crowd. I wave back and, to my surprise, nothing prevents me following the troupe inside. The dancers take off their masks for a breather, and reveal the cotton balaclavas they are wearing underneath.
     The musicians join us. Their russet jackets and black felt hats make a drab contrast with the colourful costumes of the dancers. They lay down their instruments but the decibels inside the bar are still deafening. Above the clamour of people ordering drinks and shouting greetings, I hear a volley of shots. Instinctively I duck my head, but no one else flinches. A cork lands at my feet and I look up and spot a barmaid filling glasses from freshly-opened bottles of Blanquette de Limoux. This ancient drink is the town’s other claim to fame: Blanquette de Limoux promotes itself as the oldest sparkling wine in the world, and there is no better place to taste it than at the carnival. These festive companions share a heritage that stretches back to the 16th century, and according to some sources, the slow rhythmic gestures of the carnival dance represent the peasants pressing the grapes with their feet.
     Naturally I order a glass for myself. It’s the end of the bottle and I ask the barmaid to let me see the label. The most prominent feature is a big pink number ‘1’ and the words ‘Première Bulle’ or ‘The First Bubble’. A black medallion below the pink foil neck proclaims in gold letters, ‘Sieur d’Arques. Depuis 1531’, and from the back of the bottle I learn that in 1531 a Benedictine monk from Limoux invented the first bubbly in the world. I set the bottle down on the bar and decide that these bold claims call for further investigation, but not right now. This evening I am here to enjoy the carnival and a glass or two of this historic wine.

The legend of Saint-Hilaire

Saint-Hilaire lies halfway between Carcassonne and Limoux amid gently rolling countryside, a bucolic patchwork of pasture, vineyard and woodland adorned with the occasional rocky outcrop and slender cypress.
     The abbey stands on the highest ground in town, and it was founded by Benedictine monks in the early ninth century. Before long, they were tending vines, and a document from the year 931 refers to a kind benefactor who donated a vineyard to the abbey. In the bedrock beyond the cloisters, the monks dug out caves, and this is where they made and stored their wine.
     One day in 1531, a monk was sent to fetch a bottle. You can visit the abbey and follow his footsteps from the refectory, around the gothic cloisters, up a flight of worn stone steps, across a walled courtyard, and through a doorway down into the cellars.
     Our monk was in for a big surprise on that particular day nearly five hundred years ago. He selected a bottle, took out the stopper, and discovered that a second fermentation had taken place. The wine was fizzy, or effervescent if you prefer. By accident, the monks of Saint-Hilaire had created the world’s first sparkling wine.
     The story does not end there. A century later, these lucky monks received a visit from one of their brothers in the north. Naturally they served him their sparkling wine, and the good Dom Pérignon returned to his monastery at Saint-Pierre d'Hautvillers in Champagne with the recipe hidden in his habit.
Tales such as these are no more than legends or over-imaginative marketing unless they are backed up by documentary evidence. The obvious place to look would have been in the archives of Saint-Hilaire, but these were destroyed in a fire long ago, so it caused great excitement in the Midi when, in October 2013, the director of the Departmental Archives of the Aude announced that her team had identified and authenticated a document from 1544 written on paper made from rags. Not quite 1531, but close enough to satisfy most people. At a conference held to mark the occasion, an emotional mayor of Saint-Hilaire gave thanks to the archivist for finally proving that Blanquette de Limoux is older than champagne, and the director of the Limoux wine producers’ association eulogised that this document would be an invaluable marketing tool for all the area’s winemakers.
     What is this document, and what does it say? It is a ledger kept by the Limoux town treasurer, and in an entry made on 25 October 1544, he records that various wines were supplied to Sieur d’Arques, and among them were four pints of blanquette to accompany the good lord’s dinner (this particular pint was the equivalent of 0.9 litres or 1.6 imperial pints). Unfortunately, other historians soon pointed out that there was nothing in the treasurer’s ledger to say that the wine was effervescent, or even that it came from Limoux. Blanquette was the old name for a local type of vine which we now call mauzac. The undersides of its young leaves are covered in a delicate white duvet, and blanquette is an Occitan  diminutive meaning a little bit white. By association, any wine derived from the mauzac or blanquette vine was also called blanquette, and although the vine was primarily cultivated in the Midi, it was not exclusive to Limoux. Even more confusing, peasants fell into the habit of using the word blanquette to describe several other varieties of white grape.
     So, although today a wine can only be called Blanquette de Limoux if it is effervescent and contains at least 90% mauzac, we know little about the wine that Sieur d’Arques was drinking in 1544, apart from its name, and that leaves plenty of scope for speculation over a lengthy dégustation with a winemaker. For example, Sieur d’Arques also held the title Viscount Joyeuse, and at the time he placed his order for blanquette, he was busy building his château. You can verify that he was a man of exceptional taste by dining or staying in his home, now a luxurious hotel-restaurant called Château des Ducs de Joyeuse, 12 kilometres (7.5 miles) to the south of Limoux. If the world’s first sparkling wine was available on his doorstep, a man like that would certainly have drunk it, wouldn’t he? And when his son Guillaume ordered a few more bottles of blanquette in 1588 to toast his capture of the Protestant stronghold of Brugairolles, would he have paid twice the usual price unless the white wine in question was as sparkling as his victory?
     We have to wait until the start of the 19th century for the first written confirmation of effervescence: in 1801, a certain Dr Fau claimed that his sparkling mineral water was far superior to Blanquette de Limoux with its frothy fermentation.  Nevertheless, some wines from Limoux were undoubtedly effervescent before then, but it is impossible to say when this became a reliable and deliberate characteristic.
     As suggested by the monastic legend of 1531, the first fizz will have been created by accident rather than design. Before science took control of the winemaking process, fermentation sometimes failed to complete before a wine was bottled, particularly when autumns were cool. When the weather warmed up again in March or April, the remaining sugars started a second fermentation which created carbon dioxide and often caused bottles to explode. Working in the cellars of Saint-Hilaire or Saint-Pierre d'Hautvillers was a dangerous occupation in springtime, and Dom Pérignon was at first more concerned with preventing this accidental gasification than deliberately creating it, not only for his own safety, but because in the 1660s still white wines from Champagne were building a strong reputation among the nobility in London.
     In conclusion, although the claims of seniority made by Blanquette de Limoux remain unproven, nowhere else has presented a more credible pitch for the title, Oldest Sparkling Wine in the World, and many producers in Limoux have been repeating this claim for nearly a century without being challenged.
     Wherever the early bottles of bubbly came from, they bore little resemblance to the vast majority of modern sparkling wines. Our tastes have changed, and so has the taste of the wine. Today, there are three distinct types of sparkling wine from Limoux. Two of them use the well-known and widely-used méthode champenoise, or méthode traditionelle as it must be called in the European Union unless the wine has been produced in the Champagne region. The third type offers a rare chance to travel back in time and taste something markedly different.
     Many years ago, I picked up a bottle at random from the sparkling wine shelf in my local supermarket and looked at the label. Blanquette de Limoux mèthode ancestrale. Alcohol content 6%. That’s not wine! I chose another bottle from the same producer, this one marked méthode traditionelle, which had what I believed to be a more traditional strength of 12%. Only later did I become aware of my ignorance.
     In support of Blanquette de Limoux’s claims of seniority, I shall briefly explain the difference between the two methods, even if this requires me to summarise what you may already know about the one that produces more alcohol.
     With the méthode champenoise/méthode traditionelle, juice from different varieties of grape is fermented in separate vats. This first fermentation is followed by the assemblage during which the producer can blend together the wines from different grapes, different vineyards and different years (unless it’s a vintage) to produce something he or she thinks will please the customer. This mixture is then bottled with the addition of some yeast and a small amount of a sweet liqueur which is usually unique to a particular producer. A second fermentation now takes place, but this time the carbon dioxide is trapped in the bottle making the wine effervescent. After a year or so, the bottles are gradually tilted so that the sediment from the second fermentation collects at the neck. The neck is then frozen, the temporary cork removed, the bottle topped up with a sweet liqueur, a new cork inserted, and a wire cage wrapped around the cork and neck.
     In contrast, the mèthode ancestrale uses a far simpler process. First, this type of Blanquette de Limoux is made from a single variety of grape: mauzac. One grape means one vat and no complicated assemblage. The first fermentation is brought to a standstill before all the natural sugars have been converted to alcohol. In the past, this was a natural effect due to the approach of winter, but today it is achieved by refrigeration. The wine is bottled in March – traditionally during the old moon – and the seasonal rise in temperature restarts the fermentation of the remaining natural sugars. No glucose or liqueur is added, and at the end of the second fermentation the wine has roughly half the alcohol content of a bottle produced using the méthode champenoise/méthode traditionelle.
     Which of these two methods do you think is more likely to have produced the world’s first sparkling wine? Only the second could have occurred by good fortune at Saint-Hilaire or anywhere else.
     In the 19th century, Blanquette de Limoux mèthode ancestrale was fashionable throughout France and much of western Europe. Today, it is probably the nearest thing you will find to that first sparkling wine in terms of grape variety, flavour, sweetness and alcohol content, but be warned: it is not to everyone’s taste, and that is why the total annual production is around half-a-million bottles, a mere 5% of the sparkling wine produced in Limoux.

The rise and fall of Blanquette de Limoux

In the centuries that followed those noble orders placed by Sieur d’Arques and his son, the reputation of Blanquette de Limoux – maybe sparkling, maybe not – spread throughout the realm and far beyond. In a book published in 1633, Toulouse historian Guillaume de Catel writes, ‘The sweet wine of Limoux which they call Blanquette de Limoux is the most delicious thing one can drink to celebrate the New Year…and the Germans find them so agreeable that often, when they are passing through the area where these wines are made, they stay for a while in order to taste them at their leisure.’  
     One of the most famous lovers of Blanquette de Limoux was Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States of America. Towards the end of his life he had around a hundred bottles a year shipped over from France, and 49 bottles were still in his cellar when he died, but it was a little later in the 19th century that Blanquette de Limoux reached the height of its fame thanks to the fairer sex. In contrast with some of their sisters in England and Germany, young ladies of good society in France at that time rarely drank alcohol, and certainly nothing strong enough to risk them losing their heads or their virtue. Blanquette de Limoux with its bubbles, fruity flavour and modest alcohol content was socially acceptable and became particularly popular with younger women. For their male counterparts, it was a drink that could be safely consumed without moderation at balls and parties, or perhaps to accompany a dessert.
     Tastes began to change in the 1860s, largely driven by the English nobility who began to develop a preference for drier sparkling wines. Until then, one of Blanquette de Limoux’s differentiators was its natural sweetness. The mauzac grapes were harvested late and they produced wine with a natural level of sugar ten times higher than a modern brut, giving it the same sweetness as Coca-Cola™. To achieve similar and often far greater levels of sweetness, producers in Champagne and other regions simply added sugar. When tastes changed, they simply added less, and by the late 19th century they sometimes added none at all. It was impossible to do the same with Blanquette de Limoux mèthode ancestrale.
     Around 1860, British botanists accidentally introduced phylloxera to Europe, and these tiny sap-sucking insects from the Americas began to eat their way through the Old World’s vineyards. They reached Limoux a quarter-of-a-century later, and within a couple of years two-thirds of the vineyards had been destroyed and many smaller producers decided to switch to other crops such as wheat. Those who persevered replanted using local varieties of vine grafted onto American rootstock. They also transformed the appearance of their vineyards. Before phylloxera, different varieties of grape were intermingled and left to trail along the ground in what we would now regard as a tangled mess. In contrast, the new vines were planted in neat rows and trained along wires, giving them the aspect familiar to us today.
     Another inevitable effect of phylloxera was a dramatic drop in wine production, but there was no corresponding dip in demand. Prices soared, and wines of dubious origin filled the gap, wines made with raisins imported from Greece and Turkey, or artificial wines which had never seen a grape but were instead manufactured using alcohol, glucose, tannin, baking powder and various flavourings. Imitating premium products, such as the sparkling wines of Champagne and Limoux, was particularly attractive for the counterfeiters because they commanded a higher price. Among other tricks, they took cheap white wines from no matter where, added carbon dioxide, and labelled them ‘Champagne’, or more often, ‘Blanquette’. The market – particularly in Paris and its surroundings – was awash with cheap imitations. The reputation of Blanquette de Limoux suffered particularly badly.
     During the first three decades of the 20th century, more and more legislation was introduced to combat this type of fraud, culminating in a system of appellations launched in 1936. Blanquette de Limoux was among the first wines of the Midi to receive its Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée, and since then it has slowly rebuilt its reputation and expanded its production.

From Champagne to Limoux

     In a bid to learn more about the rise and fall and rise of the sparkling wines of Limoux in the most pleasurable way possible, I decide to visit Bruno Bouché. Fifty-three producers are listed in the guidebook produced by the appellation’s ruling body, so why do I choose Bruno? Because he has an unusual story.
     In the 1920s, Bruno’s grandfather Abel began producing champagne in the village of Pierry, 30 kilometres south of Reims. In the 1980s, Bruno and his wife Bernadette took a radical step: they decided to move to Limoux. On the website of their family business, they say they came in search of new lands and, above all, in search of the origins of champagne. Surely the people of Champagne don’t believe the myth?
     ‘Was it really the legend of Saint-Hilaire that brought you to the Midi?’
     We are sitting in Bruno’s office on the first floor above the all-important tasting room. I was almost disappointed to be led through it without pause, but no doubt it is wiser to save the dégustation for after the interview. I check my voice recorder is running and wait for Bruno to answer.
     ‘Before I moved to the Midi, I didn’t know much about other sparkling wines, and the legend of Saint-Hilaire wasn’t talked about in Champagne. It’s a good story that helps to promote Limoux, but in Champagne, they have their own legends and they have also created one of the greatest commercial success stories in France.’
      ‘Why did you leave such a successful area?’
     ‘It was partly a taste for adventure. I worked in California for a few years, and then I discovered Limoux as a tourist – my wife comes from the neighbouring department. Then there were the economic considerations.’
     Bruno looks out of the window and I follow his gaze. On the other side of the car park, he is erecting a new building that will triple his bottling capacity. Bruno’s three sons now work with him as well. Business must be booming.
     ‘Let me tell you an anecdote from our family history. When my father proposed to my mother, her parents were aghast. They came from modest backgrounds themselves – my maternal grandfather was a bricklayer and my grandmother a cleaner – but they told their daughter not to marry someone as lowly as a champagne producer. That truly was a poor man’s trade! You can see how things have changed. Champagne’s success has made land so expensive that it takes more than a generation for a new purchaser to make it profitable. I had a few vines up there – and I still do – but most of the family vineyards are now cultivated by my nephew. I came here because the price of good land for vines was reasonable and the area has enormous potential.’
     I picture Bruno meeting up with the Champagne side of his family for a birthday or other celebration, and I can almost hear the popping of corks. ‘What do your northern relatives think of your Blanquette de Limoux?’
     Bruno laughs. ‘They’re not the same thing really, so it’s unfair to compare them. We have different soil, different grapes and a different climate, although their weather seems to be changing.’
     I remember reading that over the last few years, champagne houses such as Taittinger and Vranken Pommery have planted vineyards in the south of England, at least in part because climate change is pushing the best areas for making sparkling wines northwards or higher up the hillsides.
     ‘Are you suggesting the climate is changing more quickly in Champagne than here?’
     ‘It appears so. Last autumn, for the first time ever, my nephew Nicolas began harvesting three days before we did. Usually we have more sunshine and they have cooler nights, but their climate is becoming more continental, whereas ours is tempered by influences from the Pyrenees, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic.’
     ‘Tell me about méthode ancestrale: as someone who grew up with champagne, do you like it?’
     ‘Personally, I find it a bit sweet, halfway between grape juice and wine. Some of the locals love it, but it’s difficult to sell outside the region.’
     I tell Bruno an anecdote of my own. Earlier in my research, I explored the wine section of my nearest hypermarket. As well as champagne, the shelves were bulging with other sparkling offerings from Alsace, Bordeaux, Bourgogne, Gaillac, the Loire and Vouvray. There were even several choices from Italy and Spain, but from Limoux, there was a sole representative, and predictably it was not mèthode ancestrale. On my way home, I stopped at our wine merchant in Puylaurens. ‘Do you have any Blanquette de Limoux?’ I asked. ‘No, we don’t,’ said the owner ‘You’re the first person who has ever asked me for that. Most people ask for champagne, or they buy sparkling Gaillac.’ ‘Why Gaillac? It’s no closer to us than Limoux.’ After a short pause, the owner replied, ‘Gaillac is in the Tarn, and so are we. Limoux is on the other side of the Montagne Noire in the Aude.’ 
     Bruno smiles. ‘We export a lot, particularly to the United States and England, and we sell well in the immediate area, but we need to do more to develop our distribution in France and other parts of Europe. That’s one of the things my sons are working on. Since I arrived 30 years ago, all the producers have invested in their vineyards and vinification equipment, but now we need to invest more in our marketing.’
     We then discuss another factor that complicates the task of raising brand recognition: the plethora of wines – sparkling and still – produced in Limoux. The contrast with Champagne is stark. In the land of Dom Pérignon, the appellation prescribes the use of three main varieties of grape, but the product is called champagne however many of the three varieties are used and in no matter what proportions.
     In Limoux the situation is different. First, there are the two versions of Blanquette de Limoux that I have already discussed: méthode ancestrale using only mauzac grapes, and méthode traditionelle which must use at least 90% mauzac. Second, in the 1990s the Limoux producers decided to create a separate appellation for two reasons. They called it Crémant de Limoux because the term crémant is more widely understood in France than blanquette – it simply means sparkling, and it is applied to fizzy wines from many other parts of France. When they wrote the rule book for Crémant de Limoux, they also gave themselves more flexibility by allowing several varieties of grape to be used, namely chardonnay, chenin blanc, pinot noir and mauzac. As Bruno put it, crémant is better known, but blanquette is unique, so each has its advantages. Third, Limoux created separate appellations for its red wines and still whites in 1993.
     This confusing state of affairs is neatly summarised when Bruno takes me downstairs to his tasting room. Next to an ancient wine press used long ago by his grandfather in Champagne, two long shelves are set into a wall. They display the Bouché range of wines: mèthode ancestrale and méthode traditionelle, crémant and blanquette, red and white, around a dozen in total. Bruno poses for a picture with his bottles, and then he goes to the fridge and takes out a few chilled ones.
     After tasting a few of them, I tell him this is good training for the last night of the carnival, or la nuit de la blanquette.
     ‘Ah yes, the carnival! It certainly attracts a crowd, and it’s good for business.’

La nuit de la Blanquette

In 16th-century Limoux, most windmills were worked by tenants. These millers had to pay their annual rent at the end of winter, and each year when they had settled their dues, they celebrated. Legend claims that when, in 1582, this celebration coincided with Mardi Gras, the millers paraded in the central square accompanied by oboes, fifes and drums, and the Carnival of Limoux was born. And here I am, 437 years later, strolling beneath the same arcades in the same square where performers and spectators perpetuate this long tradition. My footsteps are cushioned by white confetti which lies on the ground like a heavy fall of snow. Cloaked men in black hats hold flaming torches as long as pikestaffs, and smoke fills the air with an agreeable odour which I cannot quite identify. The sky is black and the square is bathed in an eerie yellow light. This is the last night of the carnival, or Blanquette Night.
     I pause at what looks like a beer tent, but the sole drink on offer is Blanquette de Limoux, by the glass or by the bottle. I order the more modest of these two measures and survey the square. Beside the tent, an area has been sectioned off with crowd control barriers. In the centre is a rectangular metal trough, knee high and filled with sand. Already the keenest spectators are claiming the best spots for watching the execution, but before then, there will be a trial and a judgement even though everyone knows what the verdict will be. It’s the same every year: death by burning. At one end is a stage where the judges will preside, but for now a roadie is entangled in a mass of cables while he tries to install and test seven microphones. ‘Un, deux. Un deux.’
     I wander over towards one of the torchbearers and ask him about the aroma.
     ‘It’s pine resin,’ he says, and he tells me how they wrap layer after layer of resin-soaked paper around one end of a hazel staff. I remember doing something similar in the Boy Scouts, but we used old engine oil, and our black smoke smelled far less agreeable.
     ‘How long will the torch last?’
     ‘Long enough to set fire to the king.’
     I sip my Blanquette de Limoux and hope that these macabre festivities will not degenerate in the same way as they did in 1605. There was a torchlit procession that night too, and joyful dancing beneath the arcades to the music of violin and drum, but then fighting broke out between rival factions, and some of the town’s consuls were roughed up in the melee. In the 18th century, the carnival was often a rowdy affair fuelled by tensions between the rich and the poor. There were frequent stand-offs between hatters, weavers and merchants, and the municipal authorities were jeered and even stoned.
     Shortly before midnight, the band strikes up and the dancers of the Pont Vieux troupe enter the square. Their costume is black with a broad red stripe around ankle and wrist, and a double red stripe at the waist. The skull cap is black, and the mask and collar a ghostly white.
     The dancers carry the carnival king and escort him into the enclosure where he stands motionless and mute in the trough of sand and faces his judges.  He is dressed in a red beret, a black sweatshirt and a pair of blue jeans. He is guarded by four torchbearers who will act as his executioners if he is found guilty. We all listen while the judges read out a long list of accusations and counter-accusations. I find the proceedings difficult to follow because the public address system distorts their voices, and sometimes they speak in Occitan, sometimes in French. Fortunately, the intricacies of these legal arguments are of no consequence because the trial is a sham. The straw king is doomed, more straw is already piled up around his feet, and the whole lot will go up like a Christmas tree as soon as he is sentenced.
     A moment of unexpected heckling erupts from the crowd and a gilet-jaune, or yellow-vest protester, shoulders his way onto the stage. He shouts his slogan and waves his placard, and then he joins the judges and takes out his script. The carnival always strives to be topical, and this protest is staged too.
     The sentence is pronounced and the guards lower their torches into the straw. The dancers of Pont Vieux join hands and they begin to circle the king in silence. The flames take hold and the music begins, a sombre air with Occitan lyrics which the majority of my neighbours in the crowd seem to know by heart.
     ‘Carnival is a good-for-nothing
     Who eats up all our money;
     He can go to the devil
     Until next year.’
     The dancers drop to their knees and raise their hands. They lean forward in time with the music and briefly touch the ground with their foreheads and palms before returning to an upright kneeling position. A hooded man dressed in black pushes the burning straw closer to the effigy with a pitchfork and the king is engulfed by the blaze.
     The music changes tempo to something more like a jig. The dancers jump to their feet, link hands in a circle and skip their way around the burning carnival king. After less than a minute, the musicians reprise the funereal air and the dancers repeat their ironic act of homage. Some throw parts of their costumes into the flames – a glove, a hat, and even a mask. Before long, all that is left of the king is a pole to which his chicken-wire torso clings with pitiful obstinacy.
     ‘Farewell, poor man,
     Farewell poor Carnival.
     You are leaving, but I am staying
     To eat a soup of garlic.’
     Garlic soup indeed! I’ll save that for an entrée when I go to Lautrec in a few chapters’ time. I’m still on the aperitif.
     Soup or no soup, the curtain has come down on the longest carnival in the world. The judges disperse to their chambers and I follow the dancers to a noisy bar where thick green bottles fire salvoes of corks and no one doubts that theirs is the oldest sparkling wine in the world. 



CHAPTER TWELVE - FROM THE CAVES OF ROQUEFORT


The king of cheeses

Charles de Gaulle asked how anyone could possibly govern a nation that makes 258 different kinds of cheese. Other sources claim he said 365 – convenient should you wish to eat a different cheese each day of the year – but whatever the number, spare a thought for his successors. By some counts the figure now exceeds 1,600, and a survey carried out by the dairy industry found that the average French cheese shop stocks 118 of them.  If you try eating that many cheeses at the end of a gastronomic meal you will probably need a doctor, so to save us from indigestion and the emergency room, I shall select only one.
     Those indefatigable encyclopaedists, Diderot and d'Alembert, are credited with calling Roquefort the king of cheeses and the cheese of kings. For many centuries, people from the lowliest shepherd to the highest lord of the land have taken pleasure from this creamy, crumbly, strongly-flavoured cheese with veins which are usually described as blue, but to some eyes are closer to green. Before you decide which is the most accurate description, remove your Roquefort from the green packaging favoured by most manufacturers. I shall hedge my bets and call it blue-green.
     Back in the ninth century, a monk called Notker the Stammerer recorded an anecdote in which the Bishop of Albi gives Charlemagne a cheese for his supper and has to explain that the blue-green parts are the tastiest and that the king should stop picking them out with his knife and should eat them instead. Charlemagne enjoys it so much that he asks the bishop to send him two crates a year. Although Notker fails to confirm where this delicacy was made, cheese from Roquefort is mentioned in other contemporary documents. Six centuries later, Charles VI wrote a letter of patent in which he stressed the importance of protecting Roquefort’s cheese, and in 1666, the parliament of Toulouse tried to stamp out fraudulent imitators by confirming that the inhabitants of Roquefort had been granted the exclusive right to ripen ewe’s milk cheese and call it Roquefort. 
     Up until the 18th century, Roquefort cheeses were ripened in natural cavities. Over the course of time, the villagers constructed wood cabins on top of them, and later, stone houses. During the 19th century, a more productive breed of sheep, industrial methods of production, new means of transportation, and improved sales and distribution combined to boost volumes and spread the fame of Roquefort more widely, including to the United States. Between 1820 and 1914, production soared from 300 to 9,250 tonnes.  This growth called for more cellar space, and the cheesemakers enlarged their grottoes and dug new ones. If you visit les caves today, you will find a confusing mixture of natural caves and man-made cellars. The deepest goes down eight levels, and the oldest, dating from the 17th century, is so vast it is known as the cathedral.
     When it became too difficult or impractical to create any more cellar space in Roquefort, some cheesemakers used so-called caves bâtardes, or illegitimate cellars, located in other limestone mountains nearby.  This practice was outlawed in 1925 when the French government passed a law specific to Roquefort cheese, making it the first French foodstuff to enjoy the protection of an appellation (the first wine followed a decade later).  This protected status was extended to include all of the European Union in 1996 when Roquefort obtained its PDO label.
     Although most of Roquefort’s production is now controlled by giant dairy groups, the cheese of kings still relies on traditional sheep farming, raw milk, natural mould and naturally ventilated caves where the cool air is so close to saturation, the walls turn green. Roquefort is a cheese that is eternally tied to its ancestral home by geological accident and legal design, but its success has had a startling effect on the village. Today, there is nowhere quite like Roquefort.

An empty kingdom

In France, you will find at least a dozen places called Roquefort. To avoid confusion, the one famed for its cheese tags on the name of a nearby stream and becomes Roquefort-sur-Soulzon. It lies due east of Albi and north-west of Montpellier in a rugged landscape of limestone plateaux and deep valleys. The climate is harsh, the soil is poor, and because the rock is porous, there are no significant rivers. This area has been sheep country for at least three thousand years. Drove roads, stone-lined watering holes, drystone walls and stone shelters for shepherds and sheep bear testament to a long history of agro-pastoralism. Although it was too poor to support cities, the countryside is dotted with abbeys and citadels built by Cistercian monks and the two great orders of Christian knights – the Hospitallers and the Templars.
     I leave my home early one morning and take a pretty two-hour drive through terrain which grows wilder and less-populated the closer I come to Roquefort. On the edge of the village, I stop at the tourist office and jump out to stretch my legs and admire a mountain which rises from the southern edge of the car park. Its lower slopes are covered with emerald grass and golden gorse. Higher up, dark green conifers pepper the hillside, and above them, white cliffs rise abruptly towards a dazzling blue sky. This is the Combalou, a compact limestone mountain a couple of kilometres long with a flat top a mere 100 metres wide. It plays a central role in the creation of Roquefort’s blue-green cheese and I intend to climb it after I have visited the village.
     The centre of Roquefort is a kilometre away, and I set off in search of a café. It is 09.30 and I am ready for some caffeine after my journey. I pass between the football pitch and the cemetery, and then the street is lined with houses. Before long, I realise most of them have their shutters closed. Maybe Roquefort is a sleepy village and everyone is still in bed. Closer to the centre, the buildings become taller and more commercial. A mural depicts thousands of cheeses ripening on wooden racks in a vaulted cellar, and on the other side of the street, a handsome building with ochre rendering and dark green shutters nestles against the limestone cliffs. Here I see my first signs of life. These are the busy offices of Société des Caves et des Producteurs Réunis de Roquefort (SCPR), better known as Société Roquefort, and by far the town’s biggest cheese manufacturer and largest employer.
     A little further and I pass a three-storey stone building. Bizarrely, steel loading platforms cling to its stone walls. When they descend, the narrow street will be blocked to all but the slimmest of pedestrians. A Société Roquefort truck rolls towards me and I hug the wall to protect my toes. Its side is painted with the same image that I have just seen on the mural.
     I resume my morning stroll and soon pass the doors of three other cheesemakers, two of them offering free tours and tastings. The church bells strike ten o’clock. Maybe I’ll take a tour after I’ve found a café. I quicken my pace, and a few minutes later I am in open countryside on the far side of the village.
I turn and look back at Roquefort. White clouds cast a shadow over the cliffs of the Combalou and the buildings huddled at its feet. I was expecting rather more from the home of a world-famous cheese. In traversing the village, I have walked from end to end of the tiny zone where every single Roquefort cheese is required to spend at least two weeks of its youth developing the blue-green mould which is responsible for both its distinctive flavour and a large part of its value.
     Each year, the businesses in this village produce 18,000 tonnes of Roquefort with a retail value of around €350 million. Why, I wonder, is none of this wealth evident? Visit a village in a rich wine producing area – Bordeaux, Burgundy or Champagne for example – and money oozes out of the buildings and monuments. In Roquefort-sur-Soulzon, most of the real estate appears to be at best empty and at worst abandoned, with the exception of the few premises that are clearly occupied by the cheesemakers. Perhaps no one lives here, which would explain why I am still thirsty for a coffee and hungry for a croissant. Apart from the factory shops of the cheesemakers, the sole store I have passed is a pharmacy. No café, no boulangerie, no tobacconist, no hairdresser, and the three eateries are all closed. It seems as if the cheesemakers have sucked all the life out of this village.
     I explore the side streets, starting with the Avenue de la Gare, and I am soon struck by another oddity. The houses have no letterboxes. The sight of washing on a balcony at number ten provides a rare sign of human occupation. At number 18, peeling letters on a four-storey façade tell me that Maria Grimal used to make cheese here. At the end of the 19th century she was the only female cheesemaker in town. Her business was swallowed up by Société Roquefort a long time ago, and the current owner still uses her name on one of its premium products. A little further, I see the sign for a research and development complex, again belonging to Société Roquefort. On flatter ground just below the centre of town, I pass a modern factory where half-a-dozen articulated lorries are backed up against a line of loading bays. Above them runs a long green publicity board displaying photos of cheeses and the logo of Société Roquefort.
I despair of finding sustenance, unless I am prepared to risk Roquefort on an empty stomach. Instead, I return to my car and seek consolation in mouthfuls of apple and a few sips of cold water from a plastic bottle. While I try to enjoy my meagre fare, I count the white lines in the car park and note that there are three bays for coaches and 35 spaces for cars. Nearly all the parking spaces I saw in the centre of town were reserved for employees of the cheesemakers, and I deduce that, as well as being devoid of subjects, the king of cheeses does not welcome large numbers of visitors to his kingdom.
     I drift over to the tourist office where a helpful lady assures me I did not carelessly overlook a cosy establishment serving coffee. Instead, she suggests three manufacturers where I can tour the cellars and sample the cheeses, but I decide to pursue my investigations in a more logical order. First, I shall scale the cliffs of the Combalou and learn about the origins of cheese in general and Roquefort in particular.

Secrets of the Combalou

The Combalou lies in the south-west corner of one of UNESCO’s larger World Heritage Sites. The Causses and the Cévennes stretches away 50 kilometres to the north-east of Roquefort, and the whole area owes its geology to a layer of sediment deposited by the sea 200 million years ago. By the time the waters receded, this silt was up to 1,500 metres thick. Starting around 60 million years ago, movement of the earth’s tectonic plates created the mountain ranges of the Alps and the Pyrenees. Caught between them, the softer rock in this part of the Massif Central fractured and buckled, and the elements began their destructive work.
     The Combalou is a survivor. Erosion has carried away the surrounding land. There are many similar outcrops, but what makes the Combalou unusual is that it sits on a foundation of grey marl, an unstable type of lime-rich mud. Over the millennia, this has caused section after section of its cliffs to collapse.
The evidence of these landslides is impossible to miss. My path leads me up the mountain, across burning fields of scree and around boulders as big as houses. This is le sentier des échelles, the path of the ladders, so-called because, long ago, shepherds fixed iron ladders to the trickier sections and created a shortcut to the pastures on top of the mountain. 
     The summit is flat and grassy and the views are magnificent in all directions. I take a few photographs and head east. After a kilometre, I come across the ruins of a building which covers roughly the same area as two tennis courts laid end to end. Called a jasse, this is where the sheep and their shepherds used to shelter. One third of the building has lost its roof, but four stone arches remain intact. This part of the jasse was tall enough to have a loft where winter fodder was stored. Agro-pastoralism meant that enough food could be produced locally to feed the livestock through the winter, so there was no need for the seasonal migrations of pastoralism.
     The larger section of the jasse is covered by a beautiful stone-tiled roof. Inside, the walls curve upwards and inwards from ground level to create a semi-circular cross-section rather like a Nissen hut made entirely from stone. It smells of sheep, and their droppings on the earthen floor confirm that this part of the jasse is still in use.
     Cheese begins its life as milk, and in the case of Roquefort, the milk must come from a specific breed of sheep – the Lacaune (you may remember that Lacaune is also famous for its charcuterie). In 2018, there were 750,000 of these sheep, and the rules of the appellation say they must be raised in a designated zone around Roquefort. Such is the importance of the cheese of kings, this zone is roughly the size of Connecticut, or three-quarters the size of Wales.
     The Roquefort rule book also specifies that the sheep must be raised in the traditional way, grazing outside for as much of the year as possible, and when they are given hay and cereals in the depths of winter, at least three-quarters of this food must come from their home area.  From December to July, the ewes are milked twice daily, and it takes at least four days for one lactating sheep to produce the 12 litres of milk required to make a single Roquefort cheese weighing around 2.7 kilograms.
     I leave the odour of the jasse and follow a perilous path along the edge of the fractured cliffs. Pine trees shade me from the sun and I pause to peer over the edge at the roofs of the village far below. This is not a good spot for those who suffer from vertigo, and I smile as a thought jumps into my mind. Cheese has been described as milk's leap toward immortality. Perhaps this spot should be called Roquefort’s Leap, or Roquefort’s Legendary Leap. In the absence of conclusive evidence, there is plenty of scope for legends and hypotheses when it comes to the questions of when and how humans first discovered this sublime transformation, and how they learned to make a cheese turn blue-green.
     Let’s start with basic cheese. The most popular theory is that once upon a time a lonely shepherd or goatherd decided that the fourth stomach from one of his dead, unweaned lambs or kids would make a convenient vessel for transporting some milk. A set of enzymes called rennet that occur naturally in the stomach lining of these infant animals caused the milk to curdle. When our herdsman grew thirsty and tried to take a drink, he found his milk had inconveniently congealed, but when he tasted his unintentional creation he was delighted.
     Simpler possibilities include the fig. The Romans experimented with various plants to help them make cheese, and the ever-knowledgeable Pliny the Elder tells us: ‘In the fig it [the sap of the tree] is of a milky consistency, and has the peculiar property of curdling milk, and so forming cheese.’  A similar effect is also mentioned in Homer’s Iliad, written several centuries earlier.
     Like most ancient discoveries, cheese was almost certainly created by accident rather than design, and perhaps independently in more than one part of the world using more than one method. The earliest known date of cheesemaking keeps moving back in time as archaeologists make new discoveries. Once milk has curdled, every cheesemaker needs some sort of sieve to separate the curds from the whey. What are believed to be prehistoric cheese strainers have been discovered in many parts of the world, and in 2018, sieve-like pottery vessels were found at Pokrovnik in Croatia. In them, the researchers identified milk fats and this was presented as evidence that cheesemaking goes back at least 7,000 years. 
     If I look northwards from Roquefort’s Legendary Leap, I can see a succession of rocky outcrops which at first sight resemble the Combalou, but on closer inspection show no signs of spectacular collapses. The third one is around six kilometres away and it is called the Butte de Sargel. In one of its caves, archaeologists unearthed fragments of clay cheese strainers which are only a thousand years younger than the ones discovered in Croatia.  People were making cheese here long before the monks and knights began to shape the landscape and organise its agriculture.
     Today, all the initial stages of Roquefort’s production are carried out in modern dairy installations scattered around the sheep-rearing area so that the raw milk does not have to travel too far and can be curdled within 48 hours of milking. After that, the hidden depths of the Combalou help the cheese change colour. To learn how, I come back down the mountain ready for a cool spell underground in the cellars of the cheesemakers.

Going green (or blue)

Cheese is often associated with bread, either in a sandwich, on a croque monsieur, or during the cheese course at the end of a gastronomic meal. With Roquefort, this connection is made long before the cheese reaches the gourmet’s plate, and the origin of this fortuitous alliance is the subject of another legend.
     Long, long ago, there was a young shepherd who was more interested in running after the ladies than climbing the sentier des échelles to tend his flock. One hot summer’s day, he took shelter from the midday sun in one of the many grottoes of the Combalou. He was about to enjoy his simple lunch of rye bread and milk curds when he spotted a gorgeous girl in the distance. He dropped his meal and ran after her. Whether or not he caught up with the young woman depends on who is telling the tale, but all versions agree that a few weeks later the lovelorn or satiated shepherd returned to the same grotto. His forgotten lunch was still there, but his cheese was now covered in a blue-green mould. A richer man, such as a king like Charlemagne, might have assumed the cheese had gone bad and left it for the rats, but a poor shepherd was not going to waste good food for the sake of a bit of mould. He took a bite, and it was the most delicious cheese he had ever tasted.
     Lovers of Roquefort had to wait many centuries for a scientific explanation of this phenomenon. It was not until 1906 that an American microbiologist called Charles Thorn became the first person to isolate and identify the mould that gives Roquefort its tasty, colourful veins. Although he was working in Connecticut, and similar moulds are used to make other blue cheeses including English stilton and Danish blue, Charles Thorn chose to honour his discovery with the scientific name penicillium roqueforti.
     Another shepherd-related story from the Grandes Causses says that when a sheep was injured, the shepherd used to put a slice of Roquefort on its wound to prevent gangrene. Modern science tells us that there are over 300 species of penicillium, but only a handful are known to produce the antibiotic we call penicillin, and roqueforti is not one of them.
     Within the penicillium roqueforti species, there are numerous strains, and different ones have evolved in different caves of the Combalou. This means that each cheesemaker uses a unique strain, or more than one strain if the company owns multiple cellars, and each strain produces a cheese with slightly different characteristics. To cultivate these all-important moulds, contemporary manufacturers use the same type of bread that the lustful shepherd abandoned in his grotto all those centuries ago.
     Bread is an ideal medium for moulds of this family, as you will have discovered if you have left a crust lying around for too long in your kitchen. Cheesemakers such as Roquefort Papillon use a more deliberate approach. This company is the second largest producer, and once a year, its bakers prepare 1,500 kilograms of dough made from 80% rye and 20% wheat flour. This makes 300 loaves which are then baked at 400oC so that the outside is carbonised while the inside stays soft and moist. When they have cooled, the loaves are seeded with a starter powder of penicillium roqueforti and left in the cellars for two months while the mould develops inside the crusty exterior. Each loaf is cut open and its mould-rich interior is dried to produce a green powder which is then used in the cheesemaking process. These 300 loaves produce enough penicillium roqueforti for 2,000 tonnes of Papillon’s Roquefort cheese.
     The powder is added to the milk soon after it arrives in the dairy installations that are scattered around the sheep-rearing zone. The curds are then moulded into shape and each immature cheese is attacked by a vicious-looking machine armed with 48 long needles. This allows oxygen to reach the heart of the cheese and helps the mould develop. After pricking, every single cheese is transported to cellars below Roquefort where they are ripened for at least 14 days, and in many cases, three weeks.

Gabriel Coulet is the oldest cheesemaker in town. Founded in 1872 and now run by the fifth generation of the same family, their story illustrates why the geology of the Combalou is so important to Roquefort.
     Guillaume Coulet was a wagoner who lived in the centre of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon. One day, he and his son Gabriel decided to dig a wine cellar beneath their house. Suddenly, part of the rock wall collapsed and they felt a current of air. They peered into a fissure. There was no sign of light because this natural shaft was ventilated from somewhere high up on the Combalou. As residents of Roquefort, they knew that this rockfall was in fact a windfall. They had discovered a fleurine, and this was their route to riches. All they had to do was start making cheese and ripen it in their new cellar. By 1872, the new enterprise was up and running, and Gabriel took over from his father in 1906.
     Fleurine is a local word which may derive either from the Occitan for ‘blow’ or ‘go mouldy’. Perhaps it comes from both because, between them, these two verbs provide a comprehensive description of the role of a fleurine. Any cavity in the lower part of the Combalou that is connected to a fleurine will benefit from a micro-climate that is ideal for the proliferation of penicillium roqueforti. A fleurine allows the cavity to breathe in or out, depending on the atmospheric pressure outside, and this phenomenon ensures a steady temperature of around 10 degrees Celsius and high humidity of around 95% throughout the year. Two or three weeks in a cellar like this, and a Roquefort cheese is guaranteed to develop its blue-green veins. Leave it there for much longer, and the penicillium roqueforti will carry on developing until the cheese becomes inedible. To prevent this, when it is removed from the cellar each cheese is wrapped in heavy tin foil and matured for at least ten more weeks in a temperature-controlled environment. Finally, it is cut and packaged according to demand. Fortunately, these chilled storage and packaging facilities do not have to be squeezed into the main village of Roquefort, but they must be located somewhere on the commune’s territory of 17km2. Most of them are grouped together in a satellite village called Lauras a couple of kilometres down the hill and close to a main road.
     Without the constraints of the appellation, something similar to Roquefort could – and probably would – be manufactured almost anywhere in the world. In an enclosed space, modern technology allows us to create any micro-climate we choose, and penicillium roqueforti can be cultured in a laboratory. The appellation ensures that Roquefort cheese remains loyal to its home and true to its name.
     I learn all this and much more while I am in the cool cellars of three different cheesemakers. I also sample a dozen of their cheeses. These gastronomic visits leave me less hungry and far better informed about the business of cheesemaking, but I remain as mystified as ever about the deserted village. I obtain a few hints from a helpful lady who works for Gabriel Coulet, but I find some of her claims so extraordinary, I try to verify them at the tourist office. Normally, staff in tourist offices like nothing better than answering questions about their community, but in this case their response is a guarded, ‘Ask the town hall.’
     Administratively, France is divided into 36,000 communes, each one administered by an elected municipal council and a mayor. If I truly wish to understand why Roquefort is so peculiar, why its population has all but disappeared and why so many of its buildings are uninhabited, I need to talk to its mayor. Swift research in the local press tells me that the best way to secure an interview with Bernard Sirgue is not to mention my poor impression of his village as it is today. Instead, I must display great enthusiasm for his ambitious project to revitalise Roquefort, a project which has obsessed him for over a decade as he tries to reconcile the conflicting interests of the remaining residents, the cheesemakers and tourists.

Roquefort Demain

Bernard Sirgue has been mayor of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon since 1989, and when I visit him in the summer of 2020, he has just won another election. Until he retired from his day job a couple of years ago, he was also the town’s doctor.
     The Hôtel de Ville, or town hall, is a handsome building and the mayor leads me up a grand staircase towards a meeting room on the first floor. We pause on the landing and admire a mural painted by Nicolai Greschny, an Estonian artist who fled to France during the second world war and settled near Albi. Nearly a hundred churches and chapels in Occitanie are decorated with his religious frescoes, and on the wall of Roquefort’s town hall, he appears to be suggesting that its fleurines and famous cheese are gifts from heaven.
     We sit down at a table and I start with Bernard’s favourite subject: his project is called Roquefort Demain, or Roquefort Tomorrow.
     ‘Originally it was called Roquefort 2016,’ says Bernard. ‘I launched it in 2012, but the project stalled for two main reasons: first, there was constant rivalry between the cheesemakers, and second, it’s impossible to do anything in Roquefort without the support of Lactalis.’
     I have done my homework, and I know that consolidation in the industry has reduced the number of Roquefort cheesemakers to a select group of seven. At one end of this narrow spectrum are three giant enterprises that are ranked at numbers one, five and fifteen in the global dairy products industry. The largest is a group called Lactalis with a turnover of €20 billion, and it owns Société Roquefort which makes 75% of Roquefort cheese. At the other end of the scale are a couple of minnows that produce handmade Roquefort and share about 1.5% of the market between them. This situation doesn’t quite explain the mayor’s assertion.
     ‘Why is the support of Lactalis so important?’
     ‘Because it owns 80% of the village.’
     I remember my first walk about town, the office buildings, kerbside loading platforms, laboratory complex, loading bays and articulated lorries, all carrying the Société Roquefort logo. The mayor’s answer implies that most of the vacant premises must belong to Lactalis as well.
     ‘Why has the company bought so many buildings?
     ‘Because of their cellars.’
     Pieces of puzzle begin to fall into place. Although there is no shortage of land to farm Lacaune sheep in the designated zone, or to build dairies and temperature-controlled storage facilities, there is a severe geographic restriction when it comes to cellar space for the obligatory 14-day ripening period. Between them, the seven cheesemakers have purchased almost every building blessed with a naturally-ventilated cellar. No cellar, no Roquefort. The market is closed to new competitors.
     ‘That sounds logical, but why do they leave so many of their properties empty?’
     ‘It wasn’t always like that. I remember 50 years ago when Papillon’s employees lived in apartments above the cheese cellars where they worked, but those lodgings weren’t fit for modern living. People expect private bathrooms nowadays, not communal facilities on a shared landing, and Roquefort is on the north side of the mountain so they would expect heating in winter and double glazing. Most of the properties would be impossible to rent out in their current state, even for a derisory rent, and the cheesemakers aren’t interested in spending money on renovation. What interests them are the cellars beneath the properties.’
     In the early 1960s, Roquefort was a lively village with shops, cafés, a cinema and a population of 1,500. Since then, the community has shrunk and split: around 300 people now live in the old village and a similar number reside on housing estates built in Lauras during the 1970s. Commercial establishments in the old village, apart from those involved in cheesemaking, have vanished along with most of the residents.
     ‘Why were the new houses built down the road in Lauras rather than up here?’
     ‘Today, we wouldn’t class the land in the village as constructible because it sits on scree. Suppose someone did want to build a new house here: they might need to go down ten metres to find solid foundations and that would be far too expensive, unless you are creating something with commercial value like a cheese cellar.’
     I tell the mayor that, forewarned by my first visit, I stopped in Lauras on my way here this morning and enjoyed a cup of coffee on the terrace of a hotel aptly named Le Combalou. He sighs before he answers.
     ‘Visitors are astonished when they discover how badly-equipped we are to welcome tourists. No café, no hotel, no shops. If you want to buy a cup of coffee in the morning, you can’t. We have a world-famous cheese, but no infrastructure to match its reputation. That’s why tourism has plummeted. For a short while, we welcomed 400,000 visitors a year. Now the number is less than half that, and we receive even fewer visitors today than we did before the opening of the Millau viaduct.’
     You may have seen pictures of this iconic bridge with its seven towers rising out of a cloud-filled valley of the Tarn, 20 kilometres north of Roquefort. It opened in 2004 and claims to be the world’s tallest bridge.
     ‘In the summer of 2005, it was crazy here,’ continues Bernard. ’We were invaded by hordes of tourists. People visited the viaduct in the morning, had lunch somewhere, and then realised Roquefort was close by. Tour operators soon cottoned on and they sent us dozens of coaches a day. Viaduct, lunch, cheese cellar, but the cheese cellars weren’t attractive enough on their own to maintain those numbers. There was nothing else to do, no reason to stay. There are two or three restaurants which open seasonally, but only at midday. That’s why I said ten years ago, we must do something, we need to reinvent the village, but the industrialists squabbled among themselves. For example, if I suggested a site for a new car park, inevitably one cheesemaker’s cellar would be the closest to it, and the others would say, oh no monsieur le maire: you can’t put it there, it’s too close to our competitor.’
     ‘What makes you think you will have more success with Roquefort Demain?’
     ‘First, we are now part of a larger project launched by the region in 2018. Along with Millau and the Abbey of Sylvanès, we have been selected as a site that can promote Occitanie as a whole and make it more attractive for industry, commerce and tourism. The region’s president, Madame Delga, came here in 2018 and said to me, listen, Roquefort is emblematic of our region and we need to make it shine like a beacon. Second, even before her visit, the industrialists were seeing a decline in their overall business and starting to realise that I had been right when I said we needed to make the village more attractive to visitors.’
     Between 2008 and 2018, total sales of Roquefort cheese shrank by 13%. Over the same period, the market for all French cheeses with an appellation grew by 5%.  This slump had wide-reaching effects because Roquefort is more than a cheese.
     ‘It’s a major industry in our region, much more than simply a provider of 1,500 jobs in my commune,’ says Bernard. ‘Think of all the thousands of sheep farmers, vets, lorry drivers who collect the milk, manufacturers and maintainers of milking machines and dairy equipment, as well as the cheesemakers themselves.’
     Blue cheese in general, and Roquefort in particular, is too strong for some tastes, so the Roquefort cheesemakers diversified and added various white cheeses to their offerings. I tasted several during my first visit and they were pleasant enough, but not the reason for my interest in Roquefort. Nevertheless, a little over half of the ewe’s milk produced in the appellation’s sheep-rearing zone is now used to make these less-tangy cheeses and other products such as feta, yogurt, and – as a last resort – powdered milk. In 2019, Lactalis even launched a milder blue cheese made from pasteurised ewe’s milk.
     No doubt these market conditions helped to secure the support of the cheesemakers for the mayor’s project. Doubling the number of visitors to their cellars and shops would be a valuable means of promoting their products. One problem remained: how could this be done without disrupting commercial operations in this tiny, cramped village?
     There is one principal road into Roquefort – the one I walked up and down from the tourist office during my first visit – and the cheesemakers need unimpeded and regular access to their cellars. Throughout the day, a steady flow of vehicles brings young cheeses in and takes ripe ones out.
Back in 2010, the mayor commissioned a firm of architects to devise a plan which would enable tourist numbers to grow without disrupting cheese production. The concept that came out of this study is deceptively simple: allow tourists to move in the vertical plane and industry to move horizontally.
     Bernard explains what this will mean in practice. ‘I have had to make some compromises because we can’t do anything unless we acquire property from Lactalis. So, we’ll create a new car park below the centre of the village in a field which, of course, belongs to Lactalis. Some sort of mechanical lift will bring people up from the car park to a central square around the church. After six months of negotiations, Lactalis has agreed to let the commune acquire the buildings around the church.  We’ll demolish them all – not the church itself, of course – and build a Maison de Roquefort which will be home to a new tourist office, a museum, a cultural research centre and so on. Everyone will arrive on foot, so they will be able to take their time, visit a cheese cellar of their choosing, or all of them should they wish, and then jump in another lift which will take them to the top of the Combalou.’
     This second elevation involves a vertical height gain of around 170 metres, and options under consideration include a cable car and a funicular railway.
     ‘What will people do on top of the Combalou, apart from admire the view?’
     ‘We want to restore the jasse and use it to explain the history of agro-pastoralism. It lies within the UNESCO World Heritage Site and it’s important historically.’
     I resist the temptation to suggest building a café called Roquefort’s Legendary Leap. Instead, I bring our discussion back down to the village.
     ‘I can see how your project will transform the village centre, but won’t most of the buildings still be empty?’
     ‘We hope that more visitors will attract new businesses, which in turn may encourage commerce to snowball. One thing is certain: if we do nothing, nothing will develop.’

With support from the region, the department, neighbouring communes and the cheesemaking giants, Bernard Sirgue’s dream now has a more realistic chance of being realised. There is also a date which may help to focus the minds of everyone involved: 2025 will mark the centenary of Roquefort receiving its appellation.
     Before I leave the village, I wander through its deserted streets one more time. Nostalgia is pointless: the old Roquefort with its vibrant community and hundreds of residents living on top of the cheese cellars will never return. I try to picture Roquefort Demain and wonder how much will really change. If the visitor of tomorrow strays from the central area around the church, he or she will still encounter a preponderance of empty buildings and blank, lifeless façades.
     I pause opposite a row of five cottages at the bottom of the Rue de la Gare. Signage suggests that one belongs to Roquefort Papillon and another to Le Vieux Berger. The three others are just as tightly shuttered and no doubt belong to other cheesemakers. With their peeling paint and rusty ironwork, they are devoid of homely charm, but at least they are not collapsing like the cliffs above them. This thought changes my perspective, and I reflect that if the cheesemakers had not purchased properties like these, it is doubtful anyone else would have bought them. Travel through rural France and you will discover a vast stock of ancient houses which few people are prepared to spend the time and money on restoring. As a consequence, many of them are either uninhabited, for sale, close to collapse, or all three. For the prospective private purchaser, Roquefort has the added disadvantage of being built on unstable ground on the north side of a mountain.
     In some ways Roquefort is like a mining town. Its prime purpose is to produce a commercially valuable product, and what lies below ground is immeasurably more valuable than what rises above it, but unlike a mine which can be exhausted, the cellars of Roquefort are constantly refilled with new treasure. Many other industrial towns have been laid to waste, but Roquefort’s appellation ensures that the cheesemaking industry cannot relocate elsewhere. As long as consumers want to eat its cheese, Roquefort’s cellars will remain a hive of activity. As Bernard told me, the village finds itself in the unusual position of having more salaried staff than residents. Its population has disappeared, but not its industry.
     Whatever happens to the mayor’s project, visitors will continue to drive away at the end of the day with their portions of cheese, and the army of workers employed in the business of cheese fabrication will finish their shifts and return to their homes in the surrounding towns and villages. Every evening Roquefort will fall silent, and deep below ground, penicillium roqueforti will quietly complete the transformation that has made Roquefort the king of cheeses and the king of an empty kingdom.

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