The famous words of General de Gaulle – “How can you govern a country where there are 246 varieties of cheese?” – show just how closely regional identities are linked to a country’s cheesemaking heritage that seems to be rooted in ancient history. And yet this is both true and false, as this tradition that the French are so proud of only dates back five or six generations.
Exploring the subject of cheese produced by the distant and not so distant ancestors of modern-day France, proves difficult for various reasons. On the one hand, cheeses discovered in an archaeological context are rare: those from the Bronze Age are the exception that proves the rule and were only able to have been preserved thanks to specific climatic conditions. The cheeses of the past were, in actual fact, different from the cheeses we know today and they belonged to societies with gastronomic values and tastes distinct from our own.
