Curious about this quote: "'My elder colleagues tell me you never stop learning, even after 50 years of doing it,' recounted Stocchi. 'The day you think you’ve learned everything is the day you’ll start making errors.'" - To me this implies that there is more variation among the cheese than I'd expect. In this role don't you see every likely cheese over 50 years? It seems like a static product, where production methods don't change, and that should give you very consistent results from tapping.
Cheese cultures have been bred to be relatively genetically stable but they still experience genetic drift over time that can affect the product in unforeseen ways. Contamination can also introduce unknown pathogens and bacteriophages can cause mutations. Cheesemakers can eliminate the vast majority of the variation in the process but its core input is still very much alive and organic so there’s only so much they can control it.
