Subterranean factory turns cheese into dairy gold
Three-stories below street level, the Crown Finish Caves facility in Brooklyn takes some of foodies' favorite kinds of cheese and ages them in a very special environment, reports CBS News correspondent Jamie Wax.
Down a set of steep spiral stairs, about 30 feet underground, a small group of cheese lovers is giving new meaning to New York's underground food scene.
A 19th century building houses Crown Finish Caves, one of the only cheese-aging facilities of its kind in the U.S.
In 2001, Benton Brown and his wife Susan Boyle bought the building, which originally housed a brewery. Neither had any experience working in the food world.
"Cheese was really something that I was passionate about consuming. And would try cheese all over the place and then I was like, 'This is where we can make cheese down here. We can make cheese.' And that was the sort of the beginning," Brown said.
In the days before refrigeration, brewers kept their lagers chilled in the caves, which naturally maintain a temperature between 50 and 54 degrees.
They don't make cheese though; they take young cheese from producers across the U.S. and bring the days-old dairy down to their brick-arched-caves.
"The buildings are what have driven us into cheese. The space, you know, this is a site-specific project in a way," Brown said.
Turns out the dark, cool conditions are also ideal for aging cheese. Brown studied the art of affinage, or cheese aging, in Vermont.
But he still needed one more skilled hand, so he called on Sam Frank, who studied cheese-making in Vermont and Italy.
Frank and Brown inspect the cheese daily, washing the wheels with whiskey or water. Flipping the cheese over helps develop its flavor.
What was it about cheese that sucked Frank in?
"Milk is just this blank canvas that could be turned into hundreds and thousands of different flavor profiles and appearances and textures," he said. "It's a pretty amazing thing."
The cheese inside Crown Finish Caves ages anywhere from three weeks to two years. It's then distributed to nearly 50 cheese shops and restaurants across the country.
"It's kind of the French model of cheese being made outside of the city and then being shipped in to age in the city where the markets are," Boyle said.
Brown said there's a demand for a more gourmet food.
"People in America seem to have acquired a finer palate," he said.
"And that's really what we're doing a lot of here is producing something very local and very unique," Boyle added.
The best part about their job, the couple said, is the daily samplings.
This subterranean team tries each cheese before it leaves the caves.
"It is a provolone style and it is just a really beautiful table cheese. It's got that, you know, that traditional picante-provolone flavor profile. but really, it is just a lovely cheese to eat all day long," Brown said, sampling one.
A cheese may be born on the farm, but can only find the maturity and sophistication it needs, with a little shelf life in the big city.