Aged cheese in a cellar

Story

The Cheese Women of Paris

The affineurs who have kept French cheese alive.

18 January 20257 min read

The great cheese shops of Paris are run almost entirely by women. This is not a coincidence.

Marie Quatrehomme is not a cheesemonger. She is a maître affineur — someone who ages cheese, who nurtures it, who knows it better than the people who made it. Her shop on the rue de Sèvres has been running for thirty years and the quality has never dipped.

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