On Food and Cooking

Ripening, or Affinage Ripening is the stage
during which microbes and milk enzymes
transform the salty, rubbery, or crumbly curd
into a delicious cheese. The French term for
ripening, affinage, comes from the Latin
finus, meaning “end” or “ultimate point,” and
was used in medieval alchemy to describe the
refining of impure materials. For at least 200
years it has also meant bringing cheeses to the
point at which flavor and texture are at their
best. Cheeses have lives: they begin young
and bland, they mature into fullness of
character, and they eventually decay into
harshness and coarseness. The life of a moist
cheese like Camembert is meteoric, its prime
come and gone in weeks, while the majority
of cheeses peak at a few months, and a dry
Comté or Parmesan slowly improves for a
year or more.
The cheesemaker initiates and manages
this maturation process by controlling the
temperature and humidity at which the cheese