Italy

Wine and cheese - or is it wine versus cheese? In the basement of a butcher shop in Greve, in the Chianti area of Tuscany, stacks of cheese age in a cool stone room that resembles a wine cask. Under the low, barrel-vaulted ceiling, the cheese does not stand alone, but keeps company with representatives of the region’s wine industry. In the dim light, the image required long exposures, just as the subjects themselves require time to mature. As two centurions stood watch over the process, we wondered whether their mission was one of mercy or envy - guarding their charges or their own survival, in an aging contest where the race does not go to the swift.