City Goat Cheese from Zingerman's Creamery

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.

For most of its history, cheese has been a local affair. Farmers would bring their milk to a village creamery that could convert that milk into cheese and other dairy products. Cheese has always been the long term storage solution for extra milk—especially before the era of refrigerators. The creameries would produce the same type of cheese and offer it at different ages like fresh, young, aged, extra aged—that sort of thing—but most of their sales came from the fresh varieties. Cottage cheese, cream cheese, hand-ladled rounds and bright white logs were all typical and popular fare.

Folks might come into town once or twice a week to grab what they needed and stop by the local creamery, bakery, brewery, and general store for weekly supplies. A slower time to be sure, but the world wasn’t in such a hurry then, either.

Things changed, of course.

Small, local producers were mostly overtaken by the convenience and variety of grocery stores and shopping centers. Seasonality disappeared. Better living and eating through science and all that jazz. You know: TV dinners and toaster pastries and plastic wrapped blocks of orange cheese. The neighborhood creamery disappeared from the culinary landscape.

Then, slowly the trend reversed. Folks were over the microwave—they wanted well made products that tasted great. The “who” and the “how” were important again and our Zingerman’s community of businesses evolved in the same fashion: local baking, coffee roasting, cheese making. Zingerman’s Creamery hit the scene in 2001 and made an instant splash with natural cream cheese. In a couple short years they were making a variety of fresh, hand-ladled cheeses from local cow and goat’s milk—just like the old days.

Zingerman’s Creamery receives fresh milk daily from local farms within about an hour’s drive.

The volume of milk changes depending on the time of year, so they’ve become adept at changing their own production schedule to match the influx—or dearth—of milk. The cheesemakers at Zingerman’s Creamery use the same time-tested techniques that gave old village cheese its signature, light texture and subtle flavors. There’s a bright, fresh, tangy character you can only find in young, handmade cheeses. Like milk, butter and the other dairy regulars in your fridge, fresh, local, hand-ladled cheeses can once again be a staple.

Reserve the heavier, richer, more intensely flavored cheeses for a special occasion. Make fresh cheese the daily experience it used to be.