Guiding cheese from birth to maturity is a lot like parenting, albeit with less at stake. There’s no school for it, you learn on the job and the desired outcome is not guaranteed. Affinage, as the French call it, is all about keeping your precious charges on track, but every cheese—like every child—needs its own sort of nurturing.

Olivia Haver (above), a talented East Coast affineur, is fascinated by what happens inside the microbe-rich environment of the cheese cave. As the recent winner of this year’s Daphne Zepos Teaching Award, she’ll be using her grant money to study aging cellars around the U.S. with the goal of developing a how-to guide for future affineurs. What a contribution that document will make to the betterment of American artisan cheese.

Haver has worked in the cellars at Jasper Hill Farm and the Farm at Doe Run (producer of St. Malachi, the American Cheese Society 2023 Best of Show). She is now with Von Trapp Farmstead in Vermont and I have to say that that creamery’s Mt. Alice is tasting better than ever.

I recently interviewed Haver about what affineurs do and why Europe is so far ahead of us. I have edited our interview for clarity and brevity.

What’s your background? How did you end up in cheese?

In 2013 I was a cheesemonger at a small shop in New Jersey that’s now closed. I learned about how cheese marries science, storytelling and human connection, and that’s where I learned about Jasper Hill. I applied to their apprenticeship program and 3 months turned into 6-1/2 years. I became their first washed-rind cheese specialist, and I found a love for compositional data analysis. I would analyze cheese data to project quality.

How does that work?

You measure pH, moisture, fat and salt. With those numbers, plus your senses, you can project what the texture is going to be like and what flavors you can expect. For example, knowing that you have high pH and low moisture, you might have a rubbery texture. Is there anything you can do to mitigate that?

How do you define affinage for people who aren’t in the cheese biz?

It is the maturation and development of cheese. Aging is part of it, but aging denotes time, not flavor development. It’s about tracking where the flavors are going, where the appearance is, and trying to bring out the cheese’s best self through environment and physical intervention.

In Europe, it’s an esteemed profession. People like Rodolphe le Meunier, Hervé Mons, Rolf Beeler, Betty Koster, Luigi Guffanti…these are rock stars with big businesses. Why don’t we have this affinage system? Clearly there’s a need for this service.

There’s a financial barrier. In Europe they’re getting government funding. Here, cheesemakers have to sell their cheese at a higher price. If they sold to an affineur, they would make less money than if they sold to a distributor, so they have to raise the price to the affineur. The affineur has to make a profit, so it drives prices up and we would scare off consumers even more.

Plus, the U.S. has fewer resources, while Europe has a ton of information. If I call someone in Europe and say, “What kind of brushes do you use?” (for brushing cheese with brine or dusting off mold), they’ll say, “It’s a horsehair brush with a wooden handle.” Well, we can’t do that in the U.S. The FDA would not have it. We’re limited to brushes with plastic handles and nylon bristles.

I know cheesemakers use the word “cave” for the space where they age their cheese. But it’s rarely an actual cave. Are there any benefits to a natural cave?

Absolutely. Those spaces hold on to humidity and temperature in a way that’s desirable for cheese. Any environment you’re aging cheese in, whether it’s a natural cave or a small closet, is going to give your cheese its unique character. You might not have as many controls (in a natural cave), but you like what it’s doing to your cheese.

What can go wrong during affinage? Some people probably think you’re just babysitting.

Cheese does throw tantrums. You might have undesirable flora growing from sudden temperature changes. You might have spoilage bacteria in your water system. Pseudomonas fluorescens is in most water systems, and it is resilient. It gives cheese bitter flavors.

You can have cheese cracking if the humidity drops, or the rind can peel if it goes through being wet, then dry, then wet. You can have blue mold growing where it shouldn’t be. I’ve seen rinds just not want to grow. Or you have a very watery cream line and the rind slips off.

It’s hard to teach affinage because it’s not like you do A, B and C and now your cheese has matured. It’s about having a set of experiences and tools and knowing how to use them. Cheese will always tell you what it wants, but you need to tell it what to do.

Your vision paper for the grant application talked about “going to bat with inspectors.” What do inspectors not get about cheese caves?

Some inspectors are familiar with cheese, but sometimes they’re like “So you’re taking milk, spoiling it and then putting it in a basement to grow mold?” You have to explain that there’s a process that makes it safe. You have to educate them, but you also have to protect yourself. They might not understand why you’re not pasteurizing the milk, and you have to explain why raw milk is beneficial and safe.

Would you name a cheese that you think really demonstrates the impact of affinage?

Any cheese from Guffanti. I just love Guffanti. Their caves are incredible. Once you’ve been in a cave and know what it smells like, every time you open a cheese from that producer you smell that cave. When I tried three different Guffanti cheeses, knowing what the cave smelled like, that unique aroma just wafted right out at me.

Another good example would be Harbison versus Greensward. (Greensward is the same cheese as Harbison initially but matured by Murray’s.) At Jasper Hill, the focus is on a bloomy rind. At Murray’s, the focus is on applying a brine wash and trying to encourage a washed rind.

To experience Olivia Haver’s affinage expertise, seek out the cheeses of Von Trapp Farmstead. Haver will present her grant-funded research at the 2026 American Cheese Society conference.