Cheese ripening the cheese by fungi to occur. Mould-ripened cheeses ripen faster than hard cheeses, in weeks as opposed to the typical months or even years. This is because the fungi used are more biochemically active than the starter bacteria. Where the ripening occurs is largely dependent on the type of cheese: some cheeses are surface-ripened by moulds, such as Camembert and Brie; and some are ripened internally, such as Stilton. Surface ripening of some cheeses, such as Saint-Nectaire cheese, may also be influenced by yeasts which contribute flavour and coat texture. Others are allowed by the cheesemaker to develop bacterial surface
Cheese fresh. Cheeses of the Alps and Apennines were as remarkable for their variety then as now. A Ligurian cheese was noted for being made mostly from sheep's milk, and some cheeses produced nearby were stated to weigh as much as a thousand pounds each. Goats' milk cheese was a recent taste in Rome, improved over the "medicinal taste" of Gaul's similar cheeses by smoking. Of cheeses from overseas, Pliny preferred those of Bithynia in Asia Minor. As Romanized populations encountered unfamiliar newly settled neighbors, bringing their own cheese-making traditions, their own flocks and their own unrelated words for "cheese", cheeses