Raw Milk Manchego selected for Essex St. Cheese

Essex Manchego is made on a century old farm in the arid, hilly heart of La Mancha. It’s made by Maria José Gonzalez and selected for Essex Street Cheese, the famed New York importer. Each wheel is made from the unpasteurized milk of a single flock of Manchega sheep. It’s one of just three Manchegos in Spain made with an unwaxed rind.

Leaving a rind unwaxed has enormous implications for flavor and texture.

Covering the rind of a wheel or block of cheese with wax holds moisture in the cheese as it ages. That’s good for a cheesemaker’s expense account because otherwise that moisture would evaporate—and with it a bit of profit too. Wax can also help prevent the rind of the cheese from cracking. However, wax has its drawbacks. The main one is that it locks in harsh flavors released by the active cultures in the cheese. Unwaxed cheeses are able to breathe, which allows them to develop deeper, more complex flavors and rid themselves of that acidic bite you may have tasted in a waxed rind cheese.

Originally Manchego was made in baskets woven from esparto grass.

Esparto grass was also traditionally used to make espadrille shoes—hence the name. It grows wild across the dusty plains of southern Spain and northern Africa. Today plastic cheese molds have been designed to emulate the woven ridges of those baskets. To make Essex Manchego the cheese curds—that’s what’s in the vat pictured above—are put into those molds by hand and then they’re pressed to remove excess whey. After that the molds are removed, the cheese is dipped in a salt water brine, and then it begins aging. Nothing else is added to create the rind. It’s simply the naked curd, dried with exposure to air. That means that, if you want to, you can eat the rind of Essex Manchego. It’s dry enough that I usually don’t, but there’s nothing harmful about it.

You might notice a bit of grey mold on the rind of Essex Manchego at home, and if that happens you can just brush it off with a washcloth. It’s safe. Molds that grow on an unwaxed rind are actually a good thing—they’re totally natural and can even help with the flavor development.

Essex Manchego is incredibly savory.

It has brothy and toasty notes, like a bowl of beef noodle soup with a hunk of just-baked crusty bread. Those rich, roasty notes are balanced with a bit of lactic, yogurty tang. The texture is super creamy on the tongue, with just a hint of crunchy crystallization. It has none of the burning flavors that mar other Manchegos. To get the full flavor try it at room temperature. Better yet, eat it with some cured ham, a handful of nuts, some fresh figs, and a glass of dry sherry.

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.

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.