Formaggio Store #2 Pictures @ Pienza, Tuscany, Italy

[Cheese Head]

While recently on holiday in Italy, I took several pictures of cheese stores and markets and their cheeses including these of a store in small hilltop fortress town called Pienza, in Tuscany.

Click on picture to get full size image, (excuse reflectiion of me in second picture) pictures of the cheese in this store posted in their respective boards, all the pictures from Pienza stores posted on website.

[wharris]

That last picture is what i would like my basement would look like.  nice.

BTW, in the last picture, are the cheeses on the right hand side, middle row waxed? (the yellow ones...)

[Cheese Head]

Would be a nice basement, yep, they were all waxed as far as I could tell.

[Zoey]

Oh, how lovely. my heart melts while looking at this. I sooo wish I could have my own cheese store once...

[Sailor Con Queso]

Are these cheese stores cooled or just room temperature?

[DeejayDebi]

Just makes you sick to see all those lovely cheeses doesn't it?

[Cheese Head]

Sailor, sorry I put that info in the first store's post but not this one.

Not just room temp but was probably the warmest day of the year that day at 86F/30C! It would have cooled off at night and rest of year. The cheese did not have condensation on them so they hadn't been stored in fridge overnight and placed on shelves for store opening.

[Sailor Con Queso]

So are we being too anal about "cave" temperatures for aging? I'm sure these cheeses must be aged at cooler temps before they get to the cheese shop. But, their inventory can't turn over THAT fast, so they continue to age at the much higher store temperatures. The fact is, bacteria will grow much better at the higher temperatures. However, molds generally favor cooler temps.

Technically, as I said in another post, after 60 days there is no food left in our cheeses for bacteria to feed on. At that point, it might make sense to move a cheese out of the cave and into a room temp environment for longer aging. That might speed up a sharp cheddar from 1 year to 4 months or a picante Parmesan from 2 years to 6 months.

Do the French, Spanish, English and other countries sell cheese in unrefrigerated stores like that???

[Cheese Head]

Sailor, most of these were Italian type cheeses which I don't know, maybe they can survive short term warmer weather? I did notice that a few were sweating small dribbles of presumably oil. BTW, all the pictures from this store are posted on the website.

Don't know about room temp aging cheeses after ~ 60 days, but in answer to your question open air cheese markets in other countries:

• Here's some pictures of the open air morning market in Versailles near Paris France, was around 27C/80F by middle of that day.
• Here's pictures of small seller in Aberdeen, Scotland, OK that doesn't count as normally cold there all year round .