I like to imagin its one big cheese cave secretly connecting the whole country, every store and the US collectively decided to always just pick a cheese out of it and close the door, while someone fills it back up by pushing more cheese into it from the other side.
The best part is that dealing with old mines is a big issue (socially, land use wise, and environmentally). Re-purposing them as cheese caves has me howling.
late Middle English: alteration (influenced by vintner) of earlier vendage, from Old French vendange, from Latin vindemia (from vinum ‘wine’ + demere ‘remove’).
Interesting. It makes a lot of sense now, knowing that.