The Cheese Cave – Part 1: Turning Wheels

"Gently," said Lukas. "It is not a suitcase."

"It weighs forty kilos."

"And it is alive. Lift from beneath, turn with the hip. Like this."

Noah, thirty-one, a food writer from Zurich, copied him clumsily and nearly dropped the wheel. Lukas steadied it with a hand on his lower back. The cellar was a long cool tunnel cut into the mountainside, lined with wooden shelves floor to ceiling, each holding rows of pale golden wheels. The air smelled of salt, hay and earth. A single yellow lamp swung from the vault.

Lukas, thirty-six, the affineur, was tall and quiet, with a tangle of brown hair and a knit cap pulled low. He had spent fifteen years in the cellar, talking to cheeses and turning them by hand. "People think it is romantic," he said. "It is mostly cloth and salt."

"It looks romantic."

"Only from the outside."

Noah was supposed to stay a week, and he did, rising each morning in the dark to walk up the snowy track and help rub the wheels with brine. His arms ached. His hands were chapped. He had never been so happy.

On the fifth evening a snowstorm came in, and the road was closed. They shared a plate of bread and fresh cheese in the small stone hut beside the entrance, lit by a single lamp and warmed by a stove.

"I have a confession," said Noah.

"Yes?"

"I'm not writing the article any more."

Lukas looked up, eyes wide. "No?"

"I'm writing about you. I can't stop."

Lukas put down his knife. "Noah. I would like to kiss you, if you will allow it. I am not good with words. I am better with wheels."

Continue the story: Part 2 – Ripe.

Continue the story: Part 2 – Ripe.