Blessed are the cheese agers

Recently I went to the first ever Affineur of the Year awards. Er, what’s an affineur? It turns out that they are the secret to great cheese, the lactic equivalent to a wine cellar master. Sure, the cheesemaker produces the cheese itself, using rennet (or vegetarian alternative) to separate the milk solids and whey, and a bacteria ‘starter’ to sour the milk and develop an initial cheese taste, as well as shaping and pressing the curd. But this is just the beginning, the infant cheese.

It is the careful ageing, or affinage, when moulds develop on the surface and microflora in the air build the complex layers of flavour that make for the distinctive flavours and textures that mark out one Gouda or Lancashire or Camembert-style cheese from another. Time is key. At the recent Academy of Cheese Affineur of the Year award, the bowler-hatted fromage fiend Charlie Turnbull explained that when it comes to cheddar, ‘three months is barely cheese, six months is barely cheddar, nine months you might put it in a sandwiches, at 12 months it has the profiles that define it’.

Most artisan cheesemakers do their own affinage. The redoubtable Mary Quicke of Quicke’s nurtures her giant 27kg cheddar truckles for three months in a ‘nursery’, with regular rubbing and turning, before transferring them to the main ageing room where they spend up to another year.

Some specialist affineurs will buy in cheeses and finish them themselves. Fancy touches include giving them alcohol rubs or swathing them in fragrant herbs, but key are the time, temperature and humidity – as well as that mysterious, unique microflora, the bacteria that inhabit the walls and surfaces of the ageing room. While a cheesemonger is probably more concerned with ripening, bringing a soft cheese to the optimum softness, some, like Neal’s Yard and Paxton & Whitfield, have specialist ageing rooms where they will undertake the final weeks of affinage in order to bring the cheese to you at the perfect time.

If it all sounds like child rearing, you’re not far wrong. How your cheese is brought up makes a huge difference to its flavour, as I discovered tasting my way through the 10 cheeses at the awards, each of which had started off as a truckle of three-month-old Quicke’s back in May 2021. The affineurs ranged from Cambridge cheesemongers Rennet & Rind, who named their tangy version Priscilla, to cheesemakers Lincolnshire Poacher, who added a more porous coating than the traditional cloth making for a cheese with a distinctive dryer edge. James Grant of No2 Pound St in Wendover rubbed the cheese in perry to give an intensely savoury flavour referred to as ‘chicken broth’ by cheese experts, with yeasty, Marmite-y notes.

Eating my way through these 10 expertly cosseted cheeses was a reminder that a slab from the chill cabinet never tastes as good as one cut from a block in a good cheesemonger. According to Lincolnshire Poacher’s Tim Jones, this is partly because at the cheesemaker, the supermarket buyers pick whole cheeses from the selection, choosing those which have a particular flavour profile, perhaps blander or more crowdpleasing than a cheese aficionado might like. ‘They also may keep it very cold, about 1C. Cheese doesn’t like that.’

Not only that, the cheese will be cut into slabs long before it reaches your basket. This is a problem, says Turnbull, as ‘a cut cheese is like a cut flower. As soon as the cheese is cut, the clock starts ticking faster’. Moisture and volatile flavours are lost, and the smaller the chunk, the faster it will deteriorate. Most cheesemakers and mongers like to sell through a whole truckle within a month, and small slices are best eaten in a matter of days.

Then the supermarkets will wrap their slim portions of cheese in plastic, which stops it drying but can make it sweaty and give it odd, ‘off ’ flavours. Even the posher mass market offerings, apparently wrapped in greaseproof paper, have a plastic-coated lining or a depressing layer of cling film beneath. Yes, most fine cheesemongers do display their cut truckles wrapped in cling film, but this

Eating my way through 10 expertly cosseted cheeses was a reminder that a slab from the chiller never tastes as good as one cut from a block

is so that the cheese is visible to customers rather than hidden by waxed paper. ‘In fact, we are wrapping and unwrapping so many times during the day that plenty of air gets to the cheese,’ points out Miranda Bubb-humfryes of Neal’s Yard. ‘That’s not practical at home.’ And, as cheese writer Jenny Linford says, ‘really particular mongers will shave off and discard the edge of the cheese that’s been in contact with the plastic’.

The Affineur of the Year 2022 went to Rennet & Rind. Turns out Priscilla is queen of the cheese trolley, as well as the desert.