[MR] Wikipedia: Roquefort Cheese

Garth Groff and Sally Sanford mallardlodge1000 at gmail.com
Mon Jun 4 01:39:01 PDT 2018


Noble Friends, Especially Lovers of Cheese:

On this date in 1411, the French King Charles VI granted the people of
Roquefort a monopoly on their cheese (which they already had been doing for
centuries). The sheeps' milk blue cheese was required to be aged only in
certain caves near the town. Just like the names of French wines, Roquefort
is still a legal definition, and only cheeses aged in these caves can be
called "Roquefort" (at least in Europe; Americans generally ignore these
name restrictions on cheese or wine, much to the irritation of the French).

Here is more about Roquefort cheese: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roquefort
.

And as for Charles VI, he is generally known today as "Charles the Mad". He
must have made the cheese grant under one of his rare lucid periods. I've
talked about his illness before. Charles' madness led to all sorts of
mischief in France, and spurred the English to resume the Hundred Years
War: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_VI_of_France .

The madness was probably passed through his daughter, Catherine of Valois
(married off to King Henry V of England), to their only child Henry VI.
*His* madness was one of the causes of the Wars of the Roses:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_VI_of_England . The moral of our story:
Mad kings cause all sorts of problems.

Isn't history fun? You get to learn all this stuff just because of an
elegantly stinky blue cheese.

Yours Aye,

Mungo Napier, Laird of Mallard Lodge  🦆


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