Aging Cheddar Website Cultivates a Following

Call it a cheesy publicity stunt, but one cheese maker's approach to bringing

attention to a millenniums-old food-making practice has become an odd

fascination on the Internet.

Since www.cheddarvision.tv debuted in December last year, the website

offering a live broadcast of a round slab of English cheddar cheese slowly

maturing has had more than 1.2 mn hits.

The 23-kg cheese lies on an upper-level shelf in a dank storage barn in

Westcombe, about a three-hour drive southwest of London.

The celebrity cheese is one of some five thousand rounds of calcium-rich goo

sealed in cheesecloth and lard, and swirling with bacteria. But this cheddar is

the only one in the barn that has Mother Nature's slow aging process captured by

a webcam fastened to a McGyver-esque concoction of wood planks, nails, a desk

lamp, and kite string.

Calvar says the star of cheddarvision.tv will stay under the webcam's lens

for about a year before it is auctioned off for charity.

If that's too long a time to gaze into dairy cyberspace, YouTube.com has a

time-elapsed video of the cheese's first three months of life.

There's also a MySpace.com Web page dedicated to the cheddar.

-Compiled by Stuti Das



stutid@cybermedia.co.in