The first stage in making cheese is to produce curds and whey by adding rennet to milk . The curds are cooked, the whey is drained off, and the curds are ladled into molds. The cheese will go through several more stages before it's ready for consumption. Almost every type of cheese requires a certain amount of aging or ripening to develop flavor and texture. Cheese is ripened in special storage rooms with carefully controlled climates.
Some cheese can reach peak condition in a week, while others require up to five years of aging.
For true cheese aficionados, knowing how long a cheese has been aged is equivalent to knowing the vintage year on a bottle of wine. During the aging process, the cheese develops a rind . This rind further develops organisms that flavor the inside of the cheese. Blue cheeses such as Roquefort and Stilton gain a sharp aroma and flavor from the mold that is produced when needles are inserted into the green cheese, causing the release of carbon dioxide and introducing oxygen. Other cheeses, like Camembert and Brie are ripened from the outside in, by coating the green cheese with a particular mold .