It takes 120 days or more for the king of cheeses to mature quite naturally in one of our cheese cellars – significantly longer than for most other cheese varieties. You can taste the difference with Emmentaler AOC: be it mild, younger, aged in caves or organic. It is incidentally during storage that the characteristic holes appear in an Emmentaler AOC. The warmth in the maturation cellar brings about propanoic acid fermentation, which causes carbon dioxide to form. The rind of the cheese prevents this gas from seeping out. It gradually builds up in various parts of the cheese and finally forms the holes for which Emmentaler AOC is famous.