Preparation before pitting
the cheese wheels
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The technique to ripe cheese into pits has unknown origins. However, this peculiar cheese is mentioned in two inventories of 1497 and 1498 from which it emerges that the cheese did not belong to the pit owner, thus proving the usage to rent the ripening pits. These same pits were used to ensile wheat to protect it against soldiers' robberies.
Traditionally, cheese wheels were pitted late in August and September and pits were re-opened on the 25th November, St. Catherine's Day.
Pitting cheese during the autumn had two founded reasons. On one hand, the period of maximum milk production was (and still is, though to a lower extent) the spring-summer time due to a richer pasture and the need to turn milk into cheese and stock it for less productive months. On the other hand, one had cheese available also in winter, and as fresh and tasty as in summer.
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