New York City Is Home to America’s Oldest Cheese Caves

July 3, 2016 12:00 pm EDT
Cheese Cave
(Francis Demange/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

New York City lays claim to a lot of noteworthy places—but America’s oldest cheese cave? If you’re wondering what this is, it’s a cool, manmade closet, with steady humidity, where stacks of cheese sit and mature and reach their peak ripeness. They’ve been common throughout Europe for decades, but hadn’t really caught on stateside until New York purveyor Murray’s Cheese stepped in. Its owners built the first cheese caves below its Bleecker Street location in 2004, expanding the cave facilities to Long Island City, Queens, in 2013. Learn more about Murray’s different types of cheese caves here, and take a subterranean tour of them in the video below.

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