Beginner Cheeses of the World Gift Collection

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.

We ship thousands of loaves every year to bread lovers nationwide.

Our artisan bread is baked down the road from us at Zingerman’s Bakehouse. We ship bread using two business day service – nothing slower. Our bread doesn’t have any preservatives, so we use expedited shipping to help ensure it arrives in great condition.

The bread will last on the counter for a few days in its Zingerman’s bread bag.

It does not need to be refrigerated – in fact, we recommend you avoid the fridge! Refrigeration will wreak havoc on the texture.

If you want to keep the bread for more than a few days your best bet is to freeze it.

Double bag the loaf—or part of it—in plastic and freeze for up to three months.

All of our full-flavored breads are completely baked all the way so reheating is not necessary. 

You can eat the bread right out of the bag (ripping pieces or cutting slices – no judgment here). If it seems a little hard or dry, that’s because the thick, crisp crust is meant to protect the bread. Just like the rind on a natural cheese, real bread has very real crust to protect the inside of the loaf from drying out.

We only suggest that the bread will give you the “just out of the oven” experience… if you reheat it in the oven.

For a warm crackly crust and a soft, chewy crumb, we suggest putting your loaf (whole, half, or part) in a 350 degree oven for approximately 15-20 minutes. If you’re pulling bread out of the freezer, let it defrost for about 30 minutes before throwing it in the oven.

All chunks of Parmigiano Reggiano aren’t created equal—but you wouldn’t know that by looking at them. One 80-pound wheel of Parmesan looks pretty much like another. But there can be a world of difference in flavor between Parmesans made by different dairies. They’re all going to be good—but only a few are fantastic.

This wheel of Parmigiano Reggiano is not the same as that one.

Today, there are 339 dairies that make Parmigiano Reggiano cheese. Parmigiano Reggiano is protected by a DOP, which translates in English to Protected Designation of Origin. That means that legally, to be called Parmigiano Reggiano, all wheels must meet certain standards. The 339 dairies are all located in northern Italy in and around the districts of Parma, Reggio-Emilia, Modena and parts of Mantua and Bologna. The milk they use must all come from cows that live in those areas. They all use the same basic recipe, right down to all making their cheese in giant copper kettles.

However, the DOP only defines so much. Between those 339 dairies, there can be a lot of variation. The milk can come from different breeds of cows that can live at different elevations. Those cows can be fed different grasses and grains that were grown with different methods. The cheesemaker can choose to tweak the levels of butterfat or salt or cultures they add to the milk. The wheels can be aged at warmer or cooler temperatures. They can be sold as young as 13 months or aged for half a decade or more. Each of those variations will impact the final quality and flavor of the cheese. But the label may not list any of these differences: they’re all just called Parmigiano Reggiano.

So then how do you know the difference between them?

I wish I had a clean, simple rule I could give you to easily distinguish between good Parmesan and great Parmesan, but there’s not a quick reference that makes everything clear. The best advice I can offer is to taste a lot, and when possible, to learn more about the story behind a particular wheel of Parmigiano Reggiano: where exactly it comes from, who makes it, and what’s unique about what they’re doing.

A good example is Giorgio Cravero’s selection of Parmigiano Reggiano. Giorgio isn’t a cheesemaker. His family has been selecting and aging cheeses in the town of Bra for five generations, since 1855. While Giorgio isn’t the one producing the cheese, he has very close relationships with the cheesemakers.

For the cheese we sell, he selects his wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano from a dairy called San Pietro. They’re located in a village called Benedello di Pavullo, situated over 700 meters (or 2,300 feet) above sea level. At that high elevation, there’s a lot more diversity in the grasses, including plenty of wildflowers and herbs. Compared to the lowland valleys with the lush but uniform grasses that most of the Parmesan cows eat, the greater variation in the forage makes for more interesting, more flavorful milk. The San Pietro cheesemakers use their milk to make a total of six wheels each day, for a grand total of just about 2,200 wheels of cheese per year.

When the wheels are 12 months old, Giorgio collects them from the dairy and brings them to his aging cave in Bra. There, the cheeses age at cool, ambient temperatures. That allows the cheese to mature slowly. Giorgio and his team also flip the wheels over more frequently than at most cheese caves. The low temperatures and frequent flipping help to keep the cheeses moist. While some Parmigiano Reggianos can be quite hard, Cravero Parmesan tends to have a slightly softer, more creamy texture (though it’s still a hard cheese). The slow aging also helps develop a sweet, delicate flavor. And unlike most Parmesan makers and agers who only taste the cheese if they suspect there’s a problem, Giorgio regularly tastes his Parmigiano Reggiano to ensure it has those soft, sweet notes he prefers.

In central Wisconsin, about halfway between Minneapolis and Green Bay sits the small town of Thorp, home to Penterman Farm. The farm was founded by Rolf and Marieke Penterman, immigrants from the Netherlands. Land was too expensive to set up a cheesemaking enterprise in Europe, so, lucky us, they settled in Wisconsin and starting making cheese.

The Pentermans make gouda every day, all year round, from their closed herd of about four hundred cows. The cows live indoors on comfy beds of playground sand, feed on silage and hay, and have access to spinning bristly brushes dangling in the corners of their pens to scratch their back when it itches. Automated scrapers remove manure from the floors and each cow wears a kind of bovine fit-bit that monitors their temperature, behavior, eating habits, if the cow is in heat (!), etc. The level of technology used may sound antithetical to artisan producers, but it’s not used to make the cows give more milk, just to keep them healthy. When 100% of the milk for your cheese comes from your own cows you tend to take care of them very, very well. These are well loved and well cared for animals and they produce really flavorful milk that becomes really flavorful gouda that rivals the best goudas coming out of The Netherlands.