Since 1863, Société has been making its smelly, moldy cheese in caves in the mountain town of Roquefort. Around that time, tunnels were discovered with a chartreuse-green mold, a form of penecillium, which is now cultivated in the caves. Mixed with goat milk, from a special local breed of ewes, the cheese "blooms" and is made into rounds by hard-working women and then placed on end, on wooden tables, and left to ripen for months under the supervision of "master ripeners."
There are seven producers in Roquefort but Société seems to be the largest, exporting about 25% of its production and making a name for itself on the tourism circuit. As the growing season is January to June, the factory was empty and in the places of thousands of rounds of cheese were plastic imitations, The dioramas and displays date from an earlier, pre-tech period and are, in a word, cheesy.
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