Valley News has another report from the brand new Wegman’s affinage facilities. I hadn’t realized that Eric Meredith, formerly of Mons Affineurs (you can see him in the documentary The War of the Stinky Cheeses), is in charge of the affinage program. That promises good things for the future, as he worked alongside the legendary Hervé Mons for years before coming back to the US. Via Valley News:

Facing a Cheese Challenge, Major Grocery Chain Caves

The Wegmans 1916 Aged Goat Cheese is smooth, silky, a little grassy but not at all punctuated by the sharp tang that turns off so many people from other goat’s milk varieties. The four-inch round also bears little resemblance to the plastic-wrapped logs that disintegrate in your hands; it’s easily cut into wedges. “You don’t want it to crumble,” says Carrie Lesio, the cheese team leader behind the case at the Wegmans in Pittsford, N.Y. The ideal consistency, she says, is more akin to that of peanut butter.

This dairy perfection has been achieved thanks to Eric Meredith, the recently anointed Wegmans affineur (cheese ager), and his new toy, a 12,000-plus-square-foot cheese cave building not far from the company headquarters outside Rochester, N.Y. (Most of the 84 Wegmans stores are in New York and Eastern Pennsylvania, but there are two in New England, in Northborough and Chestnut Hill, Mass.)

The caves are not drippy subterranean spaces but rather seven high-tech rooms in which Meredith and his team have begun to ripen cheeses that will be distributed to stores around the country. The conditions in the caves, each of which can hold up to several thousand small pieces of cheese, are meant to mimic those in the real caves used in Europe.

“Aging cheeses isn’t easy,” Meredith says. This from a man who used to work in a converted railroad tunnel in France and now has 21st-century technology at his fingertips.

The idea at Wegmans is to take the pressure off cheesemakers by cultivating relationships with local producers who will hand over their fresh cheese to Meredith’s group to ripen. To jump-start the process, the company has provided funding for a program through Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences that will work with New York cheesemakers in creating safe, high-quality products.

Meredith’s current stock of aging cheese includes American and European selections. The affinage facility cares for the cheese from the time it comes in the door to when it’s ready to be shipped out to Wegmans stores. The caves control for temperature and humidity, and measures are in place to prevent contamination and cross-contamination of the very sensitive cheeses.

Check out the full story.

(photo ©2014 vnews.com)