Cheese cellar reaches maturity

After a year of construction, the Spring Street Grocer cheese cellar opened on Saturday. It is the first commercial underground cheese room and maturation cellar in Australia, with two maturation rooms and a retail space to taste and buy cheeses.

Cheesemonger and Spring Street Grocer general manager Anthony Femia (pictured) says the two rooms are for maturing different styles of cheeses. ''One room is for semi-hard and hard cheeses, the other for softer cheeses,'' he says. With the focus on selling the ''best farmhouse cheeses we can find'', Femia says that by doing their own maturing they can better control the quality.

They will sell local, national and imported cheeses, from raw-milk Swiss alpine cheeses and Comte to new-season, locally produced Holy Goat and Bruny Island cheeses.

The Cheese Cellar is open daily from 9am-9pm.