A Railway Tunnel Abandoned in 1939, Reborn as a Cathedral of Cheese
Eighty tons of the finest cheese in France is aging right now in complete darkness, 180 meters beneath the earth, in a railway tunnel that almost no one knows exists. It’s been there since 1939. It’s where the best cheese in the world is made — not in a dairy, but in stone, shaped by geology and time and a man named Laurent Mons who has spent fifty years learning to listen.
Your eyes adjust to the half-light. Wooden shelves stretch into darkness on both sides, holding hundreds of wheels. Maybe a thousand. Beauforts, Saint-Nectaires, Comtés, alpine tommes. The silence is complete. The only sound is your footsteps.
You’ve descended into something most people never see. This is where cheese becomes what it should have always been.
The Man Behind the Stone
It started in 1964 when Laurent’s father Hubert and his wife decided to sell cheese at markets around Roanne. They were from Auvergne — cheese country — so it seemed natural. They loaded a van and started making rounds through the countryside. The 70s boomed and so did their business. By 1983, Hervé, Laurent’s older brother, had worked with the greatest cheesemongers in Paris and came back to open the first permanent shop in the Halles Diderot in Roanne. More shops followed. Renaison. Montbrison. They built maturing cellars in Saint-Haon-le-Châtel.
Today Maison Mons is 28 people working in the cellars, 12 shops across France, 130 farmstead producers they work with, 155 national clients, 25 importing countries. But for Laurent and his brother, none of that matters much. What matters is the cheese.
“People think affinage is complicated,” Laurent says. “It’s not. It’s just paying attention.”
He works with over a hundred small producers across France, selecting only the finest farmhouse cheeses and transforming them into something exceptional. Their products grace Michelin-starred tables from Paris to Tokyo, but Laurent doesn’t spend time in restaurants. He spends it in caves.
He’s direct. No performance.
On the drive to Ambierle, he talks about producers as you pass villages — families he’s known for decades, how their technique changed one year, how that changed everything. He describes milk the way a sommelier describes wine. He talks about the difference between cheese from cows that ate grass on south-facing slopes versus north-facing ones. He’s not lecturing. He’s just talking about what he knows, the way someone talks about something they’ve spent their entire life understanding.
“You can’t control cheese,” he says at one point. “You can only work with what the milk gives you. Most people want to control everything. That’s the mistake.”
Finding a Perfect Laboratory
In 2009, Laurent and Hervé discovered something that changed everything. A railway tunnel near Ambierle, abandoned since 1939. It sat there for decades, untouched, waiting. Most people would have seen a hole in the ground. They saw what it could become.
The conditions are entirely natural. The stone absorbs moisture in winter, releases it in summer. It never freezes. Humidity stays at 98% without intervention. The air moves slowly through natural circulation. No refrigeration. No humidifiers. No human interference. Just geology working for you when you stop trying to control it.
“I didn’t build this,” Laurent says simply. “I found it. The stone does all the work.”
They renovated the tunnel and created La Compagnie d’Affinage des Caves de la Collonge. For someone who has spent his life understanding the subtleties of affinage, this was revelation. It became his laboratory — the place where he could prove something he’d always believed: that the best cheese isn’t made by human skill alone, but by listening to what the environment offers and working with it, not against it.
Maison Mons: Where Selection is Everything
Back at the small storefront, the shop reflects everything Laurent believes. There are no samples to try. No marketing materials. Just wheels of cheese arranged by producer, by region, by age. The selection changes constantly because Laurent is always refining, always tasting, always deciding what’s ready.
Walk through and you’re seeing the result of his choices. This Saint-Nectaire came from a producer in the Massif Central who rotates his herd according to seasons. That Beaufort came from a specific alpine pasture known for particular grasses. This Comté was selected because Laurent tasted it and knew the stone would teach it something more.
For customers who know, his shop is a masterclass in terroir. For everyone else, it’s just a small, unassuming storefront. He doesn’t differentiate. The cheese speaks. People either understand that or they don’t.
An Afternoon Underground: The Tasting
You reach a chamber deeper in the tunnel. A table is set among the racks. Bread. Wine — a Sancerre, a Vouvray, both from the Loire. Laurent brings out six cheeses. He doesn’t explain them beforehand. He just pours the wine and sets them down.
You start eating. The first is young, sharp with acidity. Then they move older. A Comté. A Beaufort. A Saint-Nectaire that’s been aging here for eight months.
Laurent talks while you eat. Not a presentation — just conversation. He’ll tell you about a specific producer, how his technique changed five years ago and the cheese has been different ever since. He’ll point out the difference between spring milk and summer milk. He’ll say “this one worked this year, last year didn’t.” He answers questions directly. No script.
When he hands you something, he tells you what it is and where it came from. The valley. The altitude. The producer. That’s it. Then you taste it.
The wine works. The bread works. There’s no rush. You talk, you taste, you sit in the quiet. Occasionally he pulls out something else and says “try this” or “this is what I mean.”
Three hours pass. You don’t notice it passing.
When you leave the tunnel, the air outside feels different — too thin, too dry. You realize you’ve been breathing stone for hours.
Through our long-standing relationship with the Mons family, Journeys of a Lifetime can arrange a private visit and tasting in these extraordinary underground caves.
It’s a rare opportunity to step inside one of France’s most remarkable affinage cellars and experience the art of cheese aging where it truly happens — in the dark, in the stone, and in the care of those who know it best.
Reach out to plan your visit.
