History

The Romans, in fact, first brought cheese to France. But cheese spans back even earlier than the Roman Empire, thousands of years before I raised my goats in modern-day Provence. The invention of cheese predates written records; it is believed to have occurred in the Middle East or Central Asia around the same time that sheep were first domesticated. Herders and farmers discovered that curdling and fermenting milk was a useful way to prevent it from spoiling and to stock protein-rich food for the winter months. It was the ancient Greeks who penned the earliest descriptions of cheese making; by Roman times, fashioning cheeses had become a culinary art.