cheese

Cheesemaking is a primal process, dating back thousands of years. And even with current industrial technology, the process of cheesemaking is still a complicated one, combining science with art, and crafting skills We wrap our cheese differently to preserve its integrity.
Cheese is really alive, and it likes to breathe while it ripens... which, by the way lasts right up until you eat it! If you wrap it in plastic it suffocates. Cheese is constantly losing moisture as it ages, so when it’s sealed in plastic that moisture, or more technically correct, "whey", has nowhere to go but back into the cheese. Although that sounds like a great idea, whey tends to have quite a bitter flavor. When that bitterness goes back into the cheese, it produces "off" flavors.
Traditional cheese needs to breathe as it is aged and matured. While it breathes, its flavor is enhanced and specific textures develop. The cheese loses moisture, but intensifies in flavor, just in the same way you make a great soup stock. If fact huge blocks and wheels, many over 200 lbs., must be constantly turned and whipped so that the moisture content remains even throughout the cheese.
When we wrap cheese, we use 3 pieces, a clear quick sheet, a more opaque slow sheet, and then the actual cheese paper. Once a whole cheese [a block or wheel] is cut, it will lose more moisture, so the special paper allows the cheese to breathe while it’s traveling and the moisture to evaporate properly.