The present invention relates to a method for monitoring the ripening process of cheese, which method comprises: (i) providing samples of a ripening cheese over different time points during the ripening process of the cheese (ii) performing sensory analyses on the samples to determine the intensity of at least one attribute (iii) quantifying the lactic acid bacteria which are present in the samples and (iv) correlating the intensity of at least one attribute with the quantified lactic acid bacteria.
