Three-time Affineur of the Year winner shares top tips

Affinage is what separates a good cheese counter from a great one. When you mature cheese in-house, you’re not just storing stock. You’re finishing a product, guiding a wheel through its final chapter so it hits the counter at exactly the right moment.

That’s the difference between selling cheese and selling your cheese. Anyone can order from a wholesaler’s list, but when you can tell a customer the Cheddar in front of them has been sitting in your own maturing room, turned and assessed week by week until it hit the profile you wanted, that’s a story no one else can tell. It builds loyalty, justifies the price, and gives you genuine identity on the high street.

The other thing to say is that you’re probably doing a bit of affinage already. Think of it as counter care on steroids. A younger cheese is going to change a fair bit within the shelf life it was supplied with, and you’re just trying to find the spot that works best for your customers.

Take a small cheese, a batch of ten or so, ideally something pasteurised where the blueprint of how it develops month to month is a little more stable. Taste that cheese every week across its shelf life. Do the basic care, turning, checking, photos, notes, and monitor the differences. Work out which stage your customers like the most. That’s your first maturation plan, and it’s the building block for everything that follows.

Affinage shouldn’t feel like a mysterious, elite skill. It’s a practical craft with deep roots. People have been maturing cheese for thousands of years without digital hygrometers, using attention, experience, and a willingness to learn from the cheese itself. Pick up a cheese, put it somewhere sensible, and start watching what happens.

How to get started in affinage

Start with what you already do. If you receive whole wheels and hold them before cutting, you’re already doing a form of affinage. The question is whether you’re doing it with intention.

You don’t need a purpose-built cave to begin. A clean, temperature-controlled room with reasonable humidity and airflow is enough. Pick one cheese family you know well, a natural-rind hard cheese is the most forgiving, and pay close attention.

Weigh it weekly. Note the rind, the aroma, how the paste feels. The cheese will tell you what it needs. You learn by doing, not by reading.

The cheese care/affinage connection

They’re the same discipline at different scales. Every piece of cheese on your counter is still alive. Enzymes are working, moisture is migrating, the rind is still developing. How you store, wrap, and display that cheese determines whether the customer gets something wonderful or something disappointing.

Potential pitfalls

The biggest challenge is consistency. Milk changes with the seasons, the weather, the herd’s diet. A wheel made in March won’t behave like one made in August. Learning to read each batch on its own terms, rather than applying a rigid formula, takes time.

Unwanted mould is common. The answer is usually environmental: check airflow, check humidity, keep turning and brushing. Good hygiene isn’t about sterility, it’s about managing the microbial environment so the cultures you want are winning.

Space and equipment are practical hurdles. Start small, prove the value with one or two cheeses, then build the case for investment. A single well-managed maturing fridge beats an ambitious setup you can’t maintain.

The last challenge is confidence. There’s no substitute for cutting test pieces regularly and tasting. Build a reference library in your head of what your cheeses should taste, smell, and feel like at different stages. And don’t be afraid to cull something that isn’t up to standard. Sending out a cheese you’re not proud of costs more in reputation than it saves in waste.

Don’t forget the basics

The fundamentals come down to four things: temperature, humidity, airflow and attention. Temperature controls pace. Too warm and rinds run away, pastes break down, ammonia builds. Too cold and you stall the cheese. Most maturing rooms sit between 8 and 14°C depending on the family. Humidity protects the cheese.

The important thing to stress here is food safety. It’s easy to get carried away with maturing cheese, so once you’ve chosen a cheese you want to edge along, get the product specification from the supplier. Work within the confines of that spec sheet, the shelf life, and the temperature advice. Yes, this limits your affinage activity and the levers you can push and pull, but it means you can do it safely.