Parmigiano Reggiano Cheese selected by Cravero

How will the cheese ship?

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 that ensures your shipment arrives in great shape. Dry ice will evaporate, ice packs may melt, but they will have done their job on the journey. The extra packaging is reusable on picnics and road trips. 

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 more durable aged, hard cheeses or two business day service for our more perishable younger, soft cheeses. Aged cheeses can withstand the time in transit – their age ensures their durability.

What’s up with that oil?

If you see oil, that’s just moisture leaking out of the cheese. Cheesemongers call it weeping, which sounds sad, but it’s natural and there’s no need for condolences. Just wipe your wedge with a cloth.

Should I be worried about the smell?

When you open a wrapped piece of cheese that’s been closed in a box the aroma can be strong. The tight quarters don’t let it breathe well. Don’t worry. Give it a half hour of fresh air when you want to eat it. 

Store your cheese in the warmest part of your refrigerator. That’s usually the door or a drawer. Don’t freeze your cheese, refrigerator only please!

Keep the cheese in the special bag we shipped it in. We get those snazzy bags from France where they’re developed especially for cheese. The paper allows the cheese to breathe a little and maintain its flavor. If it’s wrapped in the bag you don’t need any extra wrapping, no plastic, nothing. Just roll down the top of the bag and you’re good.

Used up all your cheese? Re-use the bag for other cheese. It’ll last a long time.

How long will my cheese last?

Many days for sure. Sometimes weeks. Bigger hunks of cheese last longer. Harder cheeses last longer too.

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 you have a lot of mold and it’s turning dark and funky it’s time to say goodbye.

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.

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.