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.

Daphne Zepos was an advocate for traditional cheesemaking and a pivotal figure in the cheese world. She was also a friend to Zingerman’s—our co-founder Ari Weinzweig had this to say about her:

“Daphne’s work to educate retailers, chefs, cheese mongers and cheese makers has contributed enormously to a huge improvement in the quality of the cheese on counters across the country. Her passion, the poetry of her cheese descriptions, her never-ending drive for better flavor, for teaching people what makes good cheese good, and for making already-good cheese even better is truly unrivaled.”

Daphne passed away in the summer of 2012, but her legacy continues with the Daphne Zepos Teaching Award (DZTA), a 501c(3) non-profit. Developed from her own vision, the DZTA is an annual scholarship that aims to grow a legion of cheese professionals who will carry on her passion for educating others about everything from the history to the selling of cheese.

The scholarship is open to those who’ve been in the in the food industry for at least three years and are members of the American Cheese Society. Each recipient is awarded $5,000 to fund travel to Europe to immerse themselves in cheese learning. They are then expected to attend the American Cheese Society Conference and share their knowledge.

That’s what you’ll be donating to when you purchase one of our Daphne Zepos Shirts. Five dollars from every shirt goes to the DZTA. Plus, it’s a great shirt that’s coveted among Zingerman’s employees—it’s ultra-soft and long-sleeved with a hood.

If you’d like to learn more about Daphne Zepos and what she meant to Ari, check out the epilogue in Guide to Good Leading, Part 3: A Lapsed Anarchist’s Approach to Managing Ourselves.

You’ll find the Daphne Zepos Teaching Award shirt at the Deli and online at Zingermans.com. You can read more about the Daphne Zepos Teaching Award on the official website.

There are currently only 740 Certified Cheese Professionals in the world, and our very own Tessie Ives-Wilson is one of them! That’s right—Tessie, the retail manager at Zingerman’s Creamery, recently took and passed the very grueling exam that the American Cheese Society offers once a year. The three-hour test includes 150 multiple choice questions about everything from the cheesemaking process to wine pairing. It’s serious business!

The ACS launched the exam in 2012 to push higher standards in both knowledge and service in the cheese industry. “It sounded really cool!” says Tessie, adding that she spent seven months studying. Although there are 150 questions on the actual test, there are about 1,500 questions that all candidates have to prepare for.

Tessie has been with Zingerman’s for a decade. She got her start with Mail Order back in 2006, and a couple of years later, she transferred to the Deli. There, she delved into the meat program, teaching hand-sliced ham program for years, but she also began thinking about a future in cheese.

“That’s when I finally realized that cheese was one of those things I could do for a living, and not just because I like cheese,” she explains. “I mean, who doesn’t like cheese?”

This realization led her to the Creamery, where Tessie decided to concentrate on what she calls, “the full range of what cheesemaking and cheesemongering is.” Taking the exam was a natural part of that process and her progress.

“For me, it was that I’ve been doing this for ten years—am I as good as I think I am? It’s that next level of personal development and professional development,” Tessie explains.

While taking the test was tough, equally nail-biting was waiting for the results, which took five long weeks. She was at a nail salon when she finally found out. “I may have scared my manicurist,” she says with a laugh. “I just randomly checked my email. I was like, ‘Oh my god! I passed! I passed! Ah!'”

Tessie couldn’t wait to tell her family and everyone at Zingerman’s the good news. And while she’s excited about the perks of the certification, Tessie is also proud of the prestige the certification brings to the Creamery.

“It just lends a little more weight to what we’re doing,” says Tessie. “We know that the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses has fantastic cheesemongers, but this is kind of that example to the world. It’s that level of professional certification that says you’ve really invested the time and energy in knowing your craft.”

If you’ve never seen Tessie in action, now’s the time! Come to one of our Creamery events. She’ll be hosting Beer & Cheese 101 on September 29 and Wine and Cheese 101 on October 13.