Time and space are major impacts to the cost when aging.
And cheese needs to be moved when aging. Like flipped over. This is done all day, every day, at the larger places because they have so many blocks of cheese. And it loses some weight as it ages. Not as much as alcohol, but some.
It’s similar to things like alcohol. Champagne bottles must be turned every day. Whiskey in barrels loses upwards of 2% per year as it ages, so a 40 year old cask has lost eighty percent of it’s volume, while sitting in a cellar and taking up space.
There is a step in champagne production where the bottles are stored upside down for a month or two and turned regularly. This is to bring all the sediments to the top of the bottle so it can be removed in the next step called disgorgement.
For each 1kg of cheese you need around 10kg of milk. Add labour and storage costs - specially relevant for aged cheeses.
This.
Time and space are major impacts to the cost when aging.
And cheese needs to be moved when aging. Like flipped over. This is done all day, every day, at the larger places because they have so many blocks of cheese. And it loses some weight as it ages. Not as much as alcohol, but some.
It’s similar to things like alcohol. Champagne bottles must be turned every day. Whiskey in barrels loses upwards of 2% per year as it ages, so a 40 year old cask has lost eighty percent of it’s volume, while sitting in a cellar and taking up space.
Your maths is a bit off here. If you lose 2% per year for 40 years, you have lost just 55.42% of the initial volume.
Don’t touch those champagne bottles every day, where did you get that from?!
“La part d’ange” (the part for the angels) is real though, so you sacrifice a bottle every like 15 years (depends) to top up a handfull of others.
Onomatopoeia is talking about riddling.
There is a step in champagne production where the bottles are stored upside down for a month or two and turned regularly. This is to bring all the sediments to the top of the bottle so it can be removed in the next step called disgorgement.
Aah fair enough!
I was there thinking of people rotating bottles daily for 20 years …