Fridge Basics
- Zone: Vegetable drawer — more humidity, fewer temperature shocks than the top shelf
- Smell discipline: Cheese absorbs odours; onions and cheese share drawers at your peril
- Airflow: Cheese needs to breathe a little; sealed wet plastic creates ammonia and slime
What to Wrap With
Best everyday method: Baking paper or cheese paper, then a loose plastic bag or beeswax wrap.
Acceptable: The monger's original wrap if still clean and breathable.
Bad: Tight cling film pressed on cut faces for a week.
Also bad: Naked cheese on a plate in the fridge — it desiccates into sadness.
Rewrap every few days if moisture builds. Pat cut faces dry if they weep.
By Style
Hard cheeses (Cheddar, Red Leicester, Double Gloucester)
Keep cool and wrapped. Cut faces may dry — trim a thin layer if needed. A well-kept mature Cheddar lasts weeks.
Crumbly territorials (Wensleydale, Cheshire, Lancashire)
Dry out faster than Cheddar. Smaller pieces, careful rewrapping, eat within a week of cutting for peak texture.
Soft bloomy rinds
Ripen from the outside in. Slight softness under the rind is normal; ammonia bite and collapsed soupiness means you waited too long. Eat near the best-before while the paste is yielding but not liquid chaos (unless that is the style and you like it).
Washed rinds
Odour is normal; slimy orange rind that smells of cleanser cleaner is not. Keep isolated so they do not perfume the milk.
Blues
Mould is intentional. White or blue growth on the cut face can be scraped; furry alien colours or sharp rotten smells are discard signals. Keep blues wrapped separately.
Freezing
Freezing damages texture — crumblies become damper and more fragile; soft cheeses suffer most. Acceptable for hard cheese destined for cooking (see Cooking). Not acceptable for a tasting board.
Ripening at Home (Limited but Real)
You can finish a young soft cheese in a cool room for a day or two if it is too firm when bought. You cannot recreate a Cheddar cave in a London flat. Do not leave washed rinds out overnight in summer "to ripen" unless you enjoy waste.
When to Throw It Away
- Persistent ammonia that does not fade after 10 minutes unwrapped
- Pink, black, or fuzzy moulds on styles that should not have them
- Slimy film with sour cleaning-product smell
- Hard cheese that is cracked dry and bitter throughout (a dry edge alone can be trimmed)
When in doubt with expensive soft cheese, ask a monger next time you buy — take a photo. Learning beats guessing.
Travel and Gifts
For same-day gifts, keep cool packs in warm months. For posting, use makers and shops that already ship — amateur soft-cheese parcels in August are how friendships end.
Storage pairs with shopping: buy less, more often, from people who turn stock. That habit is covered in the Buying Guide and the Cheese Year.