There is a large natural foods store near my workplace that has a large cheese section where I occasionally shop. Sometimes I go there to buy some cheese I’ve never tried before. Usually it’s good.
Once in a while it smells “off” but I usually assume the reason is that I’m not familiar with that type of cheese. But the other day they had Wensleydale on sale, which I love and have had numerous times, and this time it was definitely bad.
My question is… In a store environment, what makes the cheese go bad? It is improper storage, or just age?
In my refrigerator I assume it sometimes goes bad because I’ve wrapped it in plastric wrap and it can’t breathe. Is the same true in the store? If they wrapped the cheese differently would it last longer? Or would it succomb to age at some point anyway?
Cheese has already gone bad - that’s what it is.
I have found that plastic wrap can make cheeses ‘sweaty’ and this can encourage the formation of moulds, but I’ve never seen a hard cheese that went ‘bad’ without changing markedly in appearance.
How would you characterise the smell of the ‘bad’ Wensleydale? - in my experience, the aroma of some of these white crumbly cheeses is quite variable and at times quite pungent, without anything being wrong at all.
My wife and her family are major importer/distributors of cheese all over the U.S. There is a decent chance that they were the distibutors for your Wensleydale. We almost certianly know the people that made it back in England quite well. Cheese is a rather fragile biology experiment and needs a rather narrow range of conditions at all times from the time it is made until you eat it. There are lots of things could go wrong. It could be contaminated by not being fully protected like a small breech in the package at some point. A common problem is a higher temperature than normal at some point along the way. That can be caused by improper storage in a warehouse, a refrigerated truck having problems during transport, or a problem at the store. If you think about any problems the cheese might encounter from England to your refrigerator. any reasonable problem that can happen will at some point although suppliers, distributors, and retailers work hard to prevent those types of problems.
Mousebender: Now I’m going to ask you that question once more, and if you say ‘no’ I’m going to shoot you through the head. Now, do you have any cheese at all that doesn’t smell?
Wensleydale: No.
Mousebender: (shoots him) What a senseless waste of human life.
Ah - then you maybe could help me. I sometimes find that the cheese in my fridge has developed a sort of boozy smell to it and an unpleasant taste but hasn’t gotten moldy. I try to keep my hands off the cheese I’m cutting because I thought that maybe I was introducing something to the cheese if I touched it but even when it’s only ever touching plastic this boozy thing will happen. So please, if you would be so kind, what is the best way to store cheese? It happens to aged or medium cheddars; generally by Kraft or Armstrong. I thought it was only the Kraft cheeses that would happen to but recently it happened to an Armstrong so so much for that theory.
I know that cheese that gets too warm takes on a disgusting plastic texture, is wet on the outside, and the flavor changes. I would blame the seller for your woes. Freezing also changes texture. The closest I can discribe it is grainy.
I find using clean plastic wrap around the cheese works great. I touch the cheese as little as possible, because it provides bacteria and molds from your fingers a place to start growing. On average I think the cheese goes about two more weeks without spoiling, when your careful to not handle it.
The only way I can describe it is “bad cheese!” I am familiar with Wensleydale and normally it has a nice fresh scent. It’s not one of those really agey-smelling cheeses.
So if, hypothetically, all conditions were perfect, how long could Wensleydale be stored (at the market or at home) after leaving the dairy?