Cheezeducation charges ahead at the Creamery

As I work more and more with the idea of organizations as ecosystems (stay tuned for a new pamphlet on the subject next year) and with the idea of working in harmony with the greater ecosystem in which one’s business is located, it’s clear in hindsight that Zingerman’s is a near ideal fit for a community in which the largest single component is the University of Michigan. From day one, March 15, 1982, we’ve always been about learning. And that learning component of our work just keeps growing.

Over the last year or so, the latest phase of terrific Zingerman’s teaching and learning has been unfolding at the Creamery. With each month, we add more classes because the enthusiastic response to the sessions has been so positive. Between the nationally-renowned BAKE! a few hundred feet to the north, and the internationally-acknowledged ZingTrain (looks like I’ll be teaching in Dublin in the fall—email me if you have a friend there who’d be interested) across the road, I’m starting to think that, with a nod to U of M, we might start casually calling Zingerman’s Southside “South Campus.”

In any case, the Creamery crew have been teaching some terrific little classes—evenings, weekends, you name it! You can view the event calendar here. Seats are limited—sign up soon. They’re a wonderful way to treat your significant other, organize a date, create a family outing, or entertain out of town friends.

Liptauer Cheese from the Creamery

If you’re one of the thousands of folks who’ve fallen in love our pimento cheese over the last ten years, make a note for yourself to ask for a taste of this traditional Hungarian version next time you’re in the Cream Top Shop or the Deli. While Hungarians will know it as “Liptauer,” it could in a very practical sense, be seen as the Central European version of what we here know as Pimento Cheese—it’s just as compelling a blend of chile peppers and cheese, which, we nearly all know now, make a marvelously tasty combination. 

If you’re not familiar with it, Liptauer cheese (pronounced “Lip-tower”) is a long-standing Hungarian tradition. The name originates in the Hungarian-influenced, Liptov region of Slovakia. Don’t be scared by the unfamiliarity of the name—it’s a superb cheese spread spiced with peppers, slightly spicy, super delicious, and frighteningly addictive. And you can eat it on just about everything at any time of the day! In Hungary, I learned in Budapest this “Magyar pimento cheese” is more commonly known by the name Korozott. But we’ve been calling it Liptauer for so long I decided to leave the name alone. Like all of these home-style foods, there seem to be about 6,000 recipes. (By the way, it’s a great example of just how thoroughly the Columbian Exchange altered eating all over the world—take a look at how paprika came to dominate the food and cooking of Hungary.)

In central Europe, Liptauer would most likely be made with fresh sheep’s milk cheese. Here we use our very fresh cow’s milk Farm Cheese from the Creamery (we don’t have enough sheep around these parts), then blend in some minced fresh garlic, a good bit of Hungarian paprika, capers, toasted caraway, and just a touch of anchovy. The paprika is incredible! It’s from the last farmstead paprika producer in the country—yes, the family grows the peppers, dries them, and mills them, all on-site. It’s moderately spicy and exceptionally flavorful—there’s a way big burst of flavor in every bite! I’ve been told that in Hungary it was often served in casinos and bars which makes sense—it’s definitely the sort of stuff that goes great with good salami and good beer. Liptauer Cheese is lovely on baked potatoes, used as an hors d’oeuvre, or as the base for spicy finger sandwiches. Really good on a roast beef sandwich. Or stick a soft spoonful on a steak that’s just off the grill. Thinking about that new Pimen-Tuna sandwich at the Roadhouse, I’m betting it would be great in that context as well—mix it at home with a good tuna (try the Ortiz tuna that we’re selling thousands of tins of right now on Summer Sale.) Try putting a few spoonfuls in an omelet. Great for deviled eggs. It’s a perfect pairing with any of the dark breads from the Bakehouse—in particular, the Dinklebrot, the Country Miche, or the new Walnut Sage loaf. Oh yeah, it’s really good with rye. Or on a toasted poppy seed bagel! In Hungary, it’s sometimes used to stuff tomatoes or peppers—perfect for this time of year when the harvest is coming in so nicely.

In the same way that almost every family in the American South seems to have its own recipe for Pimento Cheese, and it’s hard to have a party of any size or sort without serving it, the same would go for Liptauer. Really, anything you’d do with pimento cheese you can do with Liptauer as well. If like the former, find out why the latter can add just as much zest, zip and a little variety to your culinary life! Have some Hungarian Pimento Cheese at your next get together! Or just spread a bit on a bagel for breakfast and enjoy the day!

Have you heard about our Parm Project? Throughout the Zingerman’s Community of Business we’ve embarked on a project to source Parmigiano Reggiano from multiple dairies in Italy’s Parma region and share them with you. We want to spread the word that this cheese is not a singular thing—there are a range of flavors and characteristics in Parmigiano Reggiano varieties, just like with fine wines and olive oils.

Today Grace Singelton, a managing partner at Zingerman’s Delicatessen is sharing highlights from her trip to Caseificio Ravarano #3084

I had the pleasure of spending time at Caseificio Sociale di Ravarano, where much of what I learned about the Parmigiano Reggiano cheese making was reviewed, but in much more detail and depth than I’d heard previously. Damiano is the cheese master at Ravarano and, like all cheese masters, his presence sets the tone for the production and the staff. Maybe it’s due to his study of engineering, but Damiano gave the most thorough and detailed accounts of the entire cheese making process. He gave us information on everything from the forage available in the fields to the care of animals and the gathering and transportation of milk, through the handling of the milk by the cheesemaker and all of the steps involved in creating and aging Parmigiano Reggiano.

I left with a more thorough understanding of the entire process. There are many traditions present in the production of Parmigiano Reggiano, and many newer technological advances have been added as well—older equipment, like using a hawthorn branch to cut the cheese curds, have been replaced with newer present day materials. Now stainless steel cutters have been formed for cutting the curds, but made in the same shape as the tree branch.

Damiano, the Cheesemaker

A 30 cheesemaking veteran, Damiano is a fourth-generation cheese maker who is very highly regarded and successful, but he wasn’t planning on being a cheesemaker. He started working when he was very young, and he had been an active participant in all of the cheesemaking operations throughout his life. He was studying engineering when his father passed away, but he was only 23. He returned to the facility to take over the business and that made him the person in charge at a young age. He says it was difficult, but he studied and is now happy—he gets good results and is considered a good cheesemaker. His mother is still there with him and involved in the business, helping during the production, and watching over the cheesemaking process. You can see her in the photo below, looking over the process next to her son.

Damiano has this to say about cheesemaking:

There are four tools needed to make the cheese: time, temperature, 1,000-year-old technology, and your hands. Physically making the cheese is the only way to learn—you can study, but really you only learn after a mistake is made. Your hands and your mind are the key to your success in cheese making. Man, mountain, cheese, farm are all linked.

Damiano starts his day at 5:00 a.m. He looks at the cream to see how the milk is and he decides how soon he should start. The day we visited he told us “the milk was good, outside is beautiful, and it helps the cream and the milk.” It was a sunny day, cool but not cold, and warming up nicely with the sun.

The Cheesemaking Process:

• The evening milk is brought to the dairy. It must arrive at the dairy within two hours of milking, and this limit means that the milk source cannot be a great distance away from the cheese production, keeping it part of the local economy. During the night the cream naturally rises to the surface and in the morning the milk is surface skimmed, removing a portion of the cream.
• There are 10 small farms supplying this dairy with an average of 30 cows at each farm. None of the farms have enough milk to fill a vat, but each farms milk is always divided up the same way. Damiano knows which farms pair well together, and although it may look like he does the same work for every vat, they were each treated differently.
• The morning milk arrives and is mixed with the skimmed evening milk and moved to the vats where the starter is added to the milk.
• When it is at the correct acidity level the rennet is added. The temperature is raised from 18 to 34 C (64-93 F) and after about 10 minutes it begins to coagulate. From this point on the main goal is to remove the water.
• The curds are cut into many small diamond shaped pieces. Damiano says it is important to cut the curds and not break them, so they will knit back together. The diamond shape allows more surface area, and helps the curds stick together. As the curds are cut into smaller pieces you can see them start knitting together (see photo below of cheese curd disc on Damiano’s hand or the side of the copper vat- this was not formed or strained it was simply removed with a ladle, and allowing gravity to unite the proteins).
• The heat is raised to 54-55 C (122-131F) and the curds continue to knit together and the cheesemaker uses their hands and eye to judge when the cheese is ready. This is the critical time to never walk away from the vat. The curds rest at 55 C for 60 minutes- the bad bacteria die due to time and acidity “like pasteurization but not as high a temperature”.
• Once the curds are ready, the cheese curds are gathered in the linen cheesecloth to separate them from the whey.
• The drained curds are divided in half to make “the twins”, (two wheels are made in every vat, every once in awhile if there’s not enough milk they will make a solo wheel in a vat) and the whey is drained off.
• Once the wheels are formed they will be put into the frame that imprints it with the recognizable pin dot markings along with the farm number and month of production. There are also QR codes on a casein label put on every wheel that can be used to provide full traceability on the cheese.
• The wheels rest for three days in a humid room, prior to going swimming in the brine pools. There are a couple different versions of these pools- some have the cheese floating freely in shallow pools, where they are only partially submerged and they must be rotated on a regular cycle. Other pools are much deeper, and the cheese are put on metal racks that allow them to be fully submerged into the brine water. The amount of time in brine varies with each producer but it is in a range of 18-23 days for the farms we visited.
• After removal from the brine, the wheels are moved to a larger aging room where they will be allowed to age and develop for at least 12 months. They can be considered Parmigiano Reggiano only when they are over 12 months of age and have been tested. If they pass the test they will be branded, or if they do not pass the rind on the wheels will be removed to prevent anyone from passing this cheese off as the real Parmigiano Reggiano.

A Centuries-Old Process

Many of the processes of the cheese making go back hundreds of years. The evening milk is left to sit overnight, and it is not refrigerated (held around 18 C /64.4 F). There are many different types of bacteria in the milk that are naturally occurring—they are impacted by the feed they eat, and the handling of the milk, as well as the local environment. We asked Damiano about leaving the evening milk to sit overnight at room temperature. He explained that if you had subpar milk the the outcome wouldn’t be good, which is why this isn’t done for all cheese production, but only when the milk is superior quality. The milk has a mix of bacteria that helps the cheese develop, and as the cream rises overnight it naturally removes bacteria they don’t want in the milk.

There remains within the cheese making of Parmigiano Reggiano® a blending of knowledge, traditions from the past combined with present day technology advancements. There’s still a strong reliance on the skill and craft of the cheesemaker in the process to convert a perishable liquid milk into an incredibly tasty wheel of certified Parmigiano Reggiano that continues to develop flavors and provide nutrition many years into the future. Even though we aren’t as dependent on our ability to preserve foods without refrigeration as our ancestors were, I can’t help but admire the care and skill that were developed to provide sustenance throughout the year, and the strong commitment to quality and flavor that continues to this day.

Ravarano is a coop- and the individual farmers own the dairy. Damiano is paid by the farmers to make the cheese. He also owns the cheese shop and buys the cheese that he sells in the shop. Prior to us importing the cheese with the help of Rogers Collection, all of Damiano’s cheese had been only sold in Italy. We’re thrilled to have his cheese on our counter at the Deli—stop by for a taste!

Welcome to Cooking with Grace! This is where Grace Singleton, a managing partner at the Deli, shares her favorite products and delectable home cooking tips with us. This week, she’s using one of the five new Parmigiano Reggiano varieties that the Deli is now carrying in this delicious pasta dish.

Now that we have all five of our Parmigiano Reggiano sources available at Zingerman’s Delicatessen—Valserena, Roncadella, Borgotaro, La Villa, and Ravarano—I’ve been having fun experimenting with different flavor combinations. Each of the five cheese producers has distinctly different flavor profiles, and this weekend I was experimenting with the Roncadella Parmigiano Reggiano

One of the challenges with all this great cheese is that I can’t choose which one I like best, so I currently have three different Parmigiano Reggiano varieties in my fridge. Not a bad thing, but my cheese drawer is petty full (although I seem to be eating it as fast as I bring it home)!

There are plenty of different ways to enjoy Parmigiano Reggiano, but the first thing most people think of using Parmigiano Reggiano on pasta. One of the things I love about pasta is that it’s fairly simple to make a great tasting dinner with just a few really tasty ingredients. Also, with the cooler weather this time of year, walking into a nice steamy kitchen where I’ve been boiling pasta feels warm and homey.

Now I generally don’t plan my meals out too far ahead. I like to look in my fridge and garden to see what I have on hand, or after a day of work, I’ll walk around the Deli retail area to see what inspires me or makes my mouth water. Recently, I was hungry and not in the mood to do anything too time consuming but also wanted to use some of the Parmigiano Reggiano I had in my fridge, so I decided on a two meat pasta recipe that features the Roncadella Parmigiano Reggiano. You can substitute different ingredients and flavor combinations, as that’s the fun part about cooking, but I was really fond of the depth of flavor that occurred when I combined the pancetta, the soppressata salami, dry-cured beldi olives, and the cheese.

An insider trick I learned from the talented women cooks we got to visit while we were in Italy was that in addition to serving Parmigiano Reggiano at the table on top of pasta, they also add the grated cheese into their pasta sauce as it is finishing on the stove. The freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano adds some saltiness, but also can thicken the sauce and adds its own distinct flavor profile to it.

One of the unique characteristics of Parmigiano Reggiano is that it can melt into a sauce differently than other styles of cheese. The italians rate Parmigiano Reggiano on its friability (how it breaks into very small pieces), and it’s solubility (how it melts), and instead of the stringy stretchy elasticity that I think of when melting a gruyere or provolone cheese, Parmigiano Reggiano will dissolve into the sauce which makes it an ideal ingredient in pasta sauces, or other dishes in addition to being a tasty topping.

Pasta with Pancetta & Salami featuring Roncadella Parmigiano Reggiano
Serves 2-4, depending on your appetite

½ bag Gentile brand pasta, vesuvio shape
3 oz. of Framani rolled pancetta-sliced ¼” thick
½ cup chopped onion
½ cup fresh grated carrot
½ cup beldi olives*
2 cups plain tomato sauce.
2 oz. sopressata picante salami from Nduja- sliced and cut in half
1 cup+ freshly grated Roncadella Parmigiano Reggiano**
2 tbsp fresh chopped basil for garnish
Sea salt

Directions

Using a large sautée pan, cook the pancetta over medium heat, until lightly browned on both sides and as crisp as you prefer it. I like to cook it through slowly until it’s medium brown on both sides, so it will be crumbly and crispy as a garnish on the pasta when it’s served.

Remove the pancetta from the pan and drain on paper towel, save for later. When it is cool enough to touch, chop into small (¼-½”) pieces

Add the onions to the pan and cook until translucent. Add the olives and carrots and cook a few minutes until the olives are warm and the carrots are tender, but still in tact, not soft.

Add the tomato sauce and cook until the sauce is warmed through and at the consistency that you like. If you prefer a very thick tomato sauce, you can reduce it down longer to remove more of the water. When the sauce is at the thickness you like, add the salami and ½ cup of grated Parmigiano Reggiano. Taste the sauce and add more salt or pepper to taste.

While your sauce is cooking, bring heavily salted water (it should taste like the sea) to a boil and cook according to package directions. Before you drain the pasta, save and set aside 1 cup of the cooking liquid.

Add the drained pasta to the tomato sauce in the pan, adding ¼-½ cup of the reserved pasta water, and cook for a few minutes to incorporate the flavor of the sauce into the pasta.

Serve freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, the cooked chopped pancetta, and fresh basil on the side that each person can use to garnish their plates as they like.

Buon appetito!

*a note on the olives- I like using whole olives that still have the pit in them. I find the texture of the olives, and the flavor are much better than the same brand and variety of olives that have been pitted. When I was in Italy, all of the olives that were used in recipes (baked in breads, used in salads, etc.) all contained pits. It’s just what they are used to—they expect olives to have pits. Here in the U.S., we’ve often made culinary choices that favor convenience over flavor, and most people would find an olive pit an unexpected and unwelcome visitor in a pasta dish. I actually think it helps me to follow my own commitment to eating more slowly and really savoring the food that I eat. I have to focus a bit more on what I am putting in my mouth, and eat a little more slowly, but the payoff is that I feel more satisfied after the meal. I’d make sure to warn your guests that there are pits in the olives.

**A note about freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano. Fresh grated cheese is better, and it doesn’t have to be a chore. The pasta grater that I show in the photos is one of the graters that I discovered at the retail shop for Roncadella. The Consorzio Parmigiano Reggiano supplies these, and Marissa the cheese maker from Roncadella, gave us one along with some cheese samples when we visited. Because of that, I requested they ship us some to sell at the Deli. I love this grater and find it easier to use than a traditional four-sided box grater, or the newer style micro planes. The handle is large enough and long enough to grasp easily, and it makes grating fresh Parmigiano Reggiano simple and easy, plus it’s easy to clean. You can just bring the grater and a hunk of cheese to the dinner table on a plate and pass it around. No time spent in the kitchen grating cheese, and no left-over pre-grated cheese, because you overestimated or running back to the kitchen because you underestimated! The design of the grater allows it to hold the cheese as you grate it. You can grate almost a ¼ cup of cheese into this grater at one time and then sprinkle it over anything and everything—pasta, soups, salads. You may end up with a hunk of Parmigiano Reggiano on your table at every meal!

Zingerman’s Creamery just won big at the 2017 American Cheese Society Judging & Competition. Our Manchester was honored with a second place award in the Soft-Ripened Cheese category. Creamery managing partner Aubrey Thomason tells us how this cheese got so good! 

When I started at Zingerman’s Delicatessen in 2002, the Creamery had just opened on a farm in Manchester, MI. I began at the Deli running trays and bussing tables—where all the truly great start.  I started selling cheese behind the counter in 2005. At that time, the Creamery was endeavoring to make most of the cheeses we still make today. In its early days, the Manchester was rustic. Like many cheeses of its type seen in French farmers markets, it was often dry and covered in all kinds of rogue molds: black, yellow and brown.

Five years later, after forays into the world of agriculture and cheese, and much travel abroad, I convinced John Loomis, founder of Zingerman’s Creamery, to give me an internship. I worked through the production week, working without pay the sixth day of every work week. I was very interested in farming and cheesemaking, but I wanted to see what actual agricultural production was like. After three months of cheesemaking at the Creamery, I embarked on a Zingerman’s-sponsored road trip touring dairies, breweries, and farms all over California. After that, I lived in a trailer on my sister’s property in Oceana County and worked on a vegetable farm for the summer, learning the life of a producer. When I came back I was definitely interested in the life. Early in the fall, a production assistant position opened at the Creamery and there I went!

I cut my teeth learning to make the Manchester. Cheesemaking is similar to farming: each “make” is a microcosm of an experiment that only plays out over time.

When I came to the Creamery, the Manchester was being made from Calder Dairy cow’s milk, our long time supplier out of Carleton, MI. We were adding cream from Guernsey Farms Dairy. The milk was acidified with MM100 (the citric acid of starter cultures), which has an uncontrolled acid profile. Just as an example, the recipe called for adding 25ml of dry powder to the milk. I reduced it by 5mls a week until I was down to 1ml of starter and I still got the same result: too much acid.

The Manchester was formed by ladling four layers of cream-enriched cow’s milk into molds. This in itself is not bad; it’s actually an excellent way to create texture, however it makes for much wetter cheese that is difficult to drain perfectly. Drainage is critical to consistency.

It took many years to accept that adding cream to ripened cow’s milk cheeses was never going to work. It always had the potential to ferment differently than the rest of the milk, and would produce fermented banana flavors and bitterness. Eventually, we removed all of the cream from all of the mold-ripened cheese recipes.

The Manchesters were drained in forms and then brined (soaked in a salt water solution, where the salt is absorbed through osmosis). This is commonly used for cheeses which are made with much more rennet and have a very elastic curd. Dry salting is used almost exclusively in the salting of mold ripened soft cheese, like the Manchester. By brining, we were literally adding more moisture to a cheese that we needed to remove as much moisture from as quickly as possible. And it essentially created an uncontrollable and unstable surface environment.

The cheese rarely and without notice turned out well.  At first I thought that everything was about the aging environment, how much moisture you held them in, how often you turned them. Then I turned to the cleanliness—everything had to be washed before use—the production facility, the aging rooms, and it goes on and on. I now keep a running document for training that consists of 17 factors that contribute to cheese bluing (or growing rogue molds); I continue to encounter new problems, and continue to add to it.

The Manchester’s success meant the success of the Creamery for me. Because of the technical precision required to make it great, I knew that once the Manchester had achieved some status that the Creamery was on its way. Beginning in 2007 I changed the recipe once a week for six years—that’s more than 300 changes to the process. The recipe for a cheese is all about process. The science is about understanding cause and effect, controlling variables and hitting targets for acidification, drainage, salting, and ripening every time. Every change I made to the Manchester taught me more and more, and all of the cheeses started to get better.

In 2011 I went to England and trained under French Cheese consultant Ivan L’archer. Working with him really directed the course of my cheesemaking. I kept reading, kept teaching myself chemistry, I kept changing something in the recipe every week. And I really started to understand what I was doing. In 2013 I went to the Vermont Institute of Artisan Cheese and studied with Ivan for again for another ten days. It was the first time that I understood everything he said.

Over time, I learned that everything is about acidity. I learned how to grow my own starter culture, how to dose the milk so it arrived at the perfect acidity every time (most of the time anyway). We practice “lactic” cheese making – making fairly acidic cheeses. When we acidify we are trying to arrive perfectly on time at our desired acidity. No more, no less. If you miss the desired acidity level by even one degree, the cheese will be different (dry, pebbly, ripens fast, a rainbow of molds and yeasts in blue, green, yellow, pink—you name it, I’ve seen it). Fermenting milk for lactic cheeses is much like fermenting dough for sourdough. You want a long, slow acidification at cooler temperatures so the the bacteria have time to do their work. It gives you a big rich, fully sour flavor, not just a short, sharp sourness.

The only thing we change for every make is the level of starter culture. We “read” the milk, and move in the direction it is telling us. The milk needs  to arrive at that specific acidity according to schedule. Sometimes it is fast and we are chasing it to get the curds draining; sometimes we wait an extra 8-12 hours for it to be ready; sometimes it is right on time. This is the weekly dance that makes us artisans. We go where the milk goes.

All milk is not created equal. You want milk from a healthy sized herd for the land they are on, with good quality forage, and dry feed grown locally without chemicals. And then you want that milk as fresh as you can get it, transported as short a distance as possible, and you want to transform it as quickly as you can. We pasteurize at the lowest temperature we can, hopefully preserving some of the beauty of the milk and the work the farmer has done to raise it. Milk is an excellent medium for transmitting flora that is good for us and tastes delicious.  We are taking lactic acid starter cultures, secondary ripening cultures, yeasts and molds, and we are drawing out the flavor in the milk, reproducing or encouraging the existing bacteria to live. We use the milk as a canvas, increasing the good bacteria already present in the milk, and killing anything untoward with pasteurization and acidification.

What I learned over time was that if you got the chemistry of the cheese right (meaning the right acidity in the right amount of time), if you drained the curds enough, if you added the right amount of salt in the right way, even without the proper facilities—the cheese could turn out great. However, not having the proper facilities meant this only happened at certain times of the year.

In July of 2016, we closed down our facility for a nine month construction project. During the closure we made cheese at the Dairy School at Michigan State University. The Dairy School uses milk from an onsite herd. We could not get milk from any of our sources up to Michigan State without great cost. It was a risk, but we stopped using the Jersey milk and switched to the MSU milk, with no added cream.

The cheeses turned out great. Considering that we were transporting them back from MSU and operating out of a temporary facility, it was actually shocking. The cheeses just kept getting better. The greatest success in business ownership is when your team can make the product better without you. We closed our business, went under construction, and I was gone for 6 weeks after giving birth to my twins.

When we moved back into our renovated facility in April we made the decision to make the Manchester out of Calder Dairy’s milk again. It is truly excellent milk—it’s delivered very fresh, the animals are healthy and it’s the right size farm. This year, as usual, we entered several of our cheeses into the American Cheese Society Competition—an annual competition where thousands of cheeses are submitted for judging. This year, only 411 won awards. Honestly, we have had a few bumps in the road since we moved into our new facility, and although the cheese is still tasting great, I was not expecting to win anything.

What is truly remarkable and inspiring about winning second best in our category—we tied with Moses Sleeper, Jasper Hill, VT (come taste it in our shop!) who not only produce what I consider to be one of the best cheeses in the soft ripened cow’s milk category, but are one of the best cheesemakers in the country—is that we haven’t even hit our stride.

We are great cheesemakers with a great facility to match. We can now do the milk justice, as shown by the Manchester entering its category with the competition. We will never stop improving. We will continue to make all of the tiny changes in everything that we do to get to greatness.

I want to appreciate my former partner John Loomis. He let a young kid who didn’t know anything mess around with his cheese. He trusted my intuition and let me run with it, and then entrusted the business to me. I promised that I would do him proud. Thank you to the team at the Creamery who has stuck by me and our dream through thick and thin. Their drive they have for greatness keeps me going when the days get tough. Thank you to the customers near and far who have provided valuable feedback and stuck with us, loving all of the versions of the cheese over the years.

Want to experience the Manchester? Come by the Cream Top Shop and ask for a taste! We also sell it at Zingermans.com, which ships all over the United States.

After nine months of renovations, Zingerman’s Creamery is set to open a new retail space, the Cream Top Shop. We are so excited, and we’re looking forward to welcoming you to our new digs  at our all-day Grand Opening party on Saturday, April 29 from 10 am to 6 pm. There will be tours, tastings, and even prizes! It’s so close, but we cannot wait. We hope you’ll stop in!

In the meantime, we wanted to give you a sneak peek of what we’ve been up to.

We’ve been testing recipes, like our grilled sandwiches—the one above is pimento cheese on Zingerman’s Bakehouse Rustic Italian bread. We’ll have a full menu of sandwiches featuring Zingerman’s Creamery cheese, and we’ll also be serving Munchables, our name for our customized snack trays that we fill up with cheese, bread or crackers, and your choice of other delicious things, like nuts, dried fruit, and cornichons to name a few.

“Make the Cream Top Shop, home of Zingerman’s Creamery your new lunch destination!” says Aubrey Thomason, Managing Partner of Zingerman’s Creamery.

In addition to our own award-winning cheese, we’ll also be selling our favorites from other (almost) exclusively American artisan producers like us. Here’s Tessie enjoying a whiff of a freshly cut half wheel of Flory’s Truckle Cheddar from Milton Creamery!

We’re pretty excited about our new look, too. The cows were created by hand by our in-house illustrator Ryan Stiner and will be proudly displayed in the shop very soon, and how about those  red stools? They’ll be available for guests who’d like to eat in (along with seating in our brand new tasting room), and they look right into our new production space—we’ll keep the lights on during the day, so you can see us in action.

Speaking of production, our equipment is shiny and ready to go. We’re already making our fantastic cheese and gelato. All that’s missing is you, and we’re counting the days. See you at the Grand Opening!