L'Affineur

Born in 1968, in the beautiful southern town of Toulouse France.  In my early years no one would have imagined, least of all me I would  become, an affineur.  Life in the fabulous  cheese cellars of Europe was to be my destiny!

The journey of my love of cheese began when I was just 16, my mentor a Maitre Fromager, guided me to an unbelievable understanding of how to enrich everyone's senses with magnificent flavours and aromas known previously only to the chosen few!

Once this introduction had taken place, I knew my life would be changed forever. This would be a never ending journey as more and more varieties were laid in front of me, my insatiable appetite for  cheese of every description was unstoppable.

After some ten years, I knew this great secret could not be kept in France any longer, England's' capital London was, as far as I was concerned, signed up. to this great club as soon as possible.

My chance meeting with a wonderful lady, Patricia Michelson was to guarantee this as my new home.  Her vision that her fellow countrymen should share our  passion would and still is ever expanding.  Patricia had recently opened a new venture known as La Fromagerie and I saw this as an opportunity for our combined knowledge to make good cheeses into great cheeses.

So here we were in  our 'palace', producing phenomenal cheeses that would go into some of the capital's best restaurants, this was the beginning of our conversion of the great British public.

Now of course these fledgling restaurant owners are famous celebrity chefs seen every day on TV, such as Gordon Ramsay, Jamie Oliver etc.

What better promotion for our 'cause' could there be, it is a fabulous life, an affineur and I would not change it for £10,000,000!

This was 1998 and our first maturing room was obviously proving a great success and more was to come.