Pantaleo Cheese from Sardinia

What’s the shelf life on cheese?

• Hard, aged cheeses stay good for a long time. Many days for sure. Sometimes weeks. Bigger hunks of cheese last longer. If it looks and smelled as expected, it’s likely still great.

• What if it’s got a little mold on it? A little mold is no problem. It’s a good sign, it means the cheese is alive. Scrape it off with a knife. But if there’s a lot of mold and it’s turning dark and funky it’s time to say goodbye.

• Soft cheeses and cheese spreads (like pimento and liptauer) are best eaten within a week or two of receiving them.

How do we ship artisan cheese year-round across the country?

In warmer months (early April to mid September), we ship cheese with two business day service plus warm weather care. We employ an ice pack and insulation defensive strategy to protect against warm delivery trucks and warm warehouses and ensure your shipment arrives in great shape.

The rest of the year (late September to the end of March), the shipping method will either be flat rate service (1-4 business days) for our durable hard, aged cheeses or two business day service for our more perishable soft cheeses and cheese spreads.

Hard cheeses have been carefully selected to withstand a longer transit time. Don’t worry if it arrives a bit warm or a bit cold – cheese is durable.

How should the cheese be stored once it arrives?

• Store cheese in the fridge, ideally in the spot closest to 50 degrees. That will likely be the door of your refrigerator or in a drawer where the temperature is consistent but not too cold.

• We wrap hand-cut wedges of cheese in a cheese bag before shipment, and you can continue to keep the cheese in that cheese bag. The next best option would be parchment or wax paper.

• After you open the cheese for a nibble, any remainders can be put back into the bag and closed with a simple roll or fold. 

• Do not freeze your cheese! Cheese is a living thing. Freezing will stop the natural processes that keep cheese so tasty. 

How should the cheese be served?

Regardless of the kind of cheese, it’s best to take it out of the fridge about 20 to 30 minutes before serving it. Cheese tastes better at room temperature. It makes a world of difference: the aromas expand, becoming more complex; more of the fat spreads on your tongue, which makes the flavor more intense. When cheese is warm you’ll eat less of it and enjoy it more.

Goat’s milk cheeses run the gamut of flavors, but when most of us hear the term one type comes to mind: soft, earthy cheese with a chalky edge and a barnyardy bite. We don’t lump all cow’s milk cheeses into one flavor category. Why are we so cavalier with goats?

Goat’s milk is very fragile compared to cow’s milk.

Flavors reminiscent of a barn likely indicate that the milk wasn’t treated well. As goat’s milk sits, it starts to break up which leads to soapy and rancid flavors that comes through in the final cheese, which is why using fresh milk is important. Goat’s milk also has smaller fats and different acids compared to cow’s milk, so it needs to be processed gently and acidified slowly in order to bring out the desired flavors.

Large commercial producers of goat’s milk cheese are not so gentle. They’re working with large quantities of not-so-fresh milk, pasteurizing it hot and fast, then sealing it up in plastic. All of which lead to unsavory flavors.

You really can taste the difference from small producers.

Zingerman’s Creamery uses fresh milk sourced from small Michigan goat farmers. Blakesville Creamery relies on the milk of the herd of 1500 goats that live on site at Blakesville Dairy Farm. Less time in transit and more carefully handled cheese results in better tasting cheese.

Zingerman’s Creamery gently heats their milk and pasteurizes it at lower temperatures. The milk is then allowed to slowly acidify over a longer period of time to retain those delicate, earthy flavors you want in goat cheese.

Another shortcut of industrial producers is to use GMO-modified rennet and veal rennet in their cheesemaking. They’re cheaper, but not made for goat’s milk. Zingerman’s Creamery uses rennet specifically created for goat’s milk. Although it’s more expensive, it leads to a better final flavor and supports better aging.

What about aged goat cheese?

Fresh goat cheese highlight the milk’s lovely qualities, fruity sweet flavors and a soft, chalky dryness. As they get older the “goaty” flavors can be accentuated, but well made and well aged goat’s milk cheeses will have more strength and character without any taste of barn. A great example is Brabander – aged six to nine months, the goat gouda cheese turns into a vanilla milkshake of rich flavor. St. Germain goat cheese is aged less, only about four months, so some of the delicate, bright, lemony flavors remain.

First things first: it’s not a cave.

Cheesemongers universally refer to their cheese storage rooms as caves but these rooms have about as much in common with a cave as astroturf has in common with the field of dreams. Cheese caves are commercial coolers. Usually walk-ins, which is industry speak for a refrigerator big enough for a full-sized door.

Our cave is ten feet wide, twenty feet long, about the size of a short container truck. It is stark white and sits right in the middle of our warehouse, across the pick line from the bread bagging tent. Between the two they mark the two poles of our operations. Bread and cheese. Both made by hand. Cut by hand. Wrapped by hand. Traditional, practically ancient foods.

We work mostly in whole wheels of cheese.

That’s the way the cheesemakers make them and that’s the way we buy them. We haul them into the cheese cave and cut them open by hand. Sometimes with a big knife. Sometimes with a cheese wire: a thick steel cable with handles that the cheesemonger uses to glide through cheese like butter.

And sometimes you’ve got to tackle Parmigiano Reggiano. Those 80 pound wheels have a hide as tough as a stegosaurus. They need to be coaxed open with a set of wedge shaped knifes that become part of every cheesemonger’s rite of passage. A freshly cracked wheel’s aroma is beguiling. Every one who splits one stops for a moment, puts their face up to the cut surface, and inhales. Fresh shards of parmesan always flake off too – cheesemonger’s treat.

Once a wheel is open we cut pieces of cheese and hand wrap them in waxed cheese bags.

If we cut a piece that weighs exactly the right size on the scale we ring the bell – perfect cut! We send the just-cut cheese out to be packed in boxes, then wait for the container to empty and return to let us know we need to cut a few more. We do this all day long for the 50+ cheeses we carry. On our busiest day in December we’ll do it thousands of times.

That means your cheese is essentially cut to order.

It spends a few hours at most from when it’s cut to when it’s packed to ship. It sounds simple – and it is. But it’s also rare. Most companies that ship cheese these days don’t cut cheese to order. They ship cheese that has been cut long ago – weeks, even months – and sealed in cry-o-vac. It’s not terrible, but remember that once a cheese gets cut it never gets better. It fades. Cry-o-vac slows the fading, but if it spends a long time cut in a wrapper its flavor will become a shadow of itself.

Freshness matters, even when you’re talking about aged cheese.

The primary culprit for flavor loss is air. Air surrounded the wheel of the cheese, of course, but it didn’t penetrate the paste inside thanks to the rind. Now the cheese, with its insides showing, is under siege by air. Air swoops in to dry out the cheese, carrying the environment’s off-aromas and unwanted bacteria along the way.

To protect the cheese’s cut face from air’s ravages we wrap each cheese in a waxed cheese bag. This bag lets the cheese breathe yet keeps it from drying out. The wax lining keeps them in perfect shape. It lasts, too – reuse it for other cheese, it’ll keep almost any hard cheese in great condition.