So you got a box of our delicious cheese delivered to your doorstep! Maybe it’s your first, maybe you’re a seasoned pro. Here are some of the most frequently asked questions and common concerns when it comes to getting a delivery from us.
Cheese Quality and Characteristics
You have just received a box of artisanal cave-aged cheese. If this is a new experience, the cheese may strike you as looking, feeling, and smelling different from what you might encounter at your local grocery store. Rest assured, your cheese is most likely presenting as intended. Read on for more details about what to expect from one of our cheese shipments!
Cheese Aromatics
We commonly receive questions about “why the cheese smells so strong” when your shipment first arrives. This is a totally normal phenomenon that has a few explanations:
Cave-ripened, natural-rind cheeses are more aromatic. We make cheese using traditional methods in lieu of homogenous, industrial techniques. The result is a more fragrant cheese—and that’s the way we like it. We aim to craft a full sensory experience with our cheeses that highlights the variations between batches.
Your Cheese Has Been Traveling In A Stifled Environment. We seal up our boxes in insulated liners to keep temperatures cool. This sealed atmosphere traps concentrated aromas.
Your Cheese May Have Warmed Somewhat. And that’s OK. Part of the reason we encourage you to allow the cheese to come to room temperature before consumption: it allows the cheese to express its aroma and texture fully. If the temperature has risen, the aroma might be strong.
Your cheese has not gone bad! Strong aromatics are part of the experience.
Temperature Concerns
Your cheese has arrived and the ice packs of melted. This means that they’ve done their job.
Our shipments are typically in transit between 24-60 hours once they leave our facility. The ice packs are meant to slowly melt as they continue to cool the atmosphere inside of our packaging.
What if it is not ice cold inside of your box?
Good. We don’t want it to be. The goal of keeping the box cool is to keep the cheese from becoming over-ripe too quickly.
Remember: Our cheese is aged in underground cellars at temperatures between 45-55º Fahrenheit. They do not meet refrigeration temperatures until just before they enter the supply chain. If your box is not cold, don’t worry. Get your cheese into the fridge and it will be A-OK.
We also change our shipping practices depending on seasonality. In the summertime we ship with faster speeds and with more ice to keep the products cool.
Blue Green Mold On Harbison
One of our most commonly asked questions is why Harbison has a fuzzy blue-green mold on its bark belt.
This is not indicative of spoilage! This blue-green flora is a native strain of the same Penicillium molds that make Harbison’s velvety white rind!!
You’ll likely encounter this culture only on Harbison’s bark wrapping. Don’t eat the bark!
The rinds on our cheeses are “natural.” This means that the rind has formed in an open cellar environment by cultivating fungal and bacterial microorganisms.
If this is your first time encountering the fact that molds, yeasts, and bacteria are integral to cheese production, don’t despair! These organisms have been used in fermenting foods for hundreds of years and are completely safe for consumption. You can’t have beer without yeast, nor could you have Lacto-fermented pickles without lactobacillus.
Best-By Dates
You may notice that there are some fun numbers on the back of your cheese. These are Best-By dates and Batch Dates.
The batch date is most important for us. We know where every piece of cheese from every batch ends up for food safety and traceability reason. If you’re curious to know when your cheese was born, the batch is readable as YYMMDD.
The enjoy-by date is our best recommendation of when the cheese will be most enjoyable. The enjoyability of cheese is a subjective experience. Some people like it younger and firmer. Some like the cheese when it’s softer and riper. No matter the case, the cheese ought to taste good up to this date.
Can you eat a cheese past its best-by date? Yes! You can. Often we hear about customers (or employees) holding on to a Harbison a week or so past its best-by in order to get it super soft and spreadable. Many of our cheeses, though, will begin to have stronger ammonia aromas and become less delicious past this point.
When Is My Cheese Perfectly Ripe?
This is the toughest question to answer.
“Perfect” ripeness is subjective, so it helps to know what you’re looking for. If you like your soft cheese with a dense, stable texture, eat it young. If you like it runny and spoonable, it’s best to hang on to that cheese for longer.
The most sure-fire way to know if your cheese will be the way you like it is to do a sensory evaluation before digging in:
Squish the cheese. Is it soft or firm?
Sniff the cheese. Is the aroma mild or strong? Is it fresh or does it smell a little more developed?
Take a gander at that cheese. Is the rind smooth and uniform or is there more mottling and signs of breakdown?
What Is A Rind And Can I Eat It?
The rind is sort of like the “skin” of the cheese. It’s a protective surface composed of microscopic cultures that we expend a lot of time and effort cultivating. We recommend you give it a nibble.
All of our rinds are edible. Certain rinds are more palatable than others. Soft ripened cheeses with “brie-style” rinds—like Harbison, Little Hosmer, or Moses Sleeper—are delicious. They’re also the hardest to separate from the paste—the creamy interior of the cheese.
The cheeses in our collection that are aged longer can be more austere. Cabot Clothbound has had the cloth removed from its rind before it gets to you so you can eat it. It may be more austere, however, with more earthy and spicy flavors.
IMPORTANT: Don’t eat bark! Harbison and Winnimere are two of our cheeses that have a belt of spruce bark that cinches the cheese to give it form and impart some flavor. While eating the bark won’t harm you, we don’t recommend the experience.
Why Sherry Gray Looks The Way It Does
Is that black mold on your Sherry Gray? No!
That dark gray dappling is actually vegetable ash. Sherry Gray is coated in a layer of food-grade vegetable ash early on in its life. This helps to create a better foothold for the fuzzy white rind to develop later on in the cheese’s ripening. It also gives the cheese a handsome appearance when it is finished.
Ash-ripening cheeses is a centuries-old technique that is widely used in European cheesemaking.
Thanks so much for enjoying independently-produced cheese from Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom!
If you have any further questions or concerns, don’t hesitate to reach out to our customer support team.