By Greg Gonzales

Even though we don’t believe in Santa Claus past a certain age, most of us can find plenty of magic in holiday celebrations with friends, coworkers and family. There’s magic in the time we finally get to spend together exchanging stories, it’s in the laughing and crying and generosity ― and it’s in the food we share together, especially the right cheeseboards. Done properly, the right cheeseboard can make a statement at any gathering, become the topic of next year’s conversation, and your customers can do just that if your store provides them the tools, boards, foods and guidance to get there.

“Coming into this part of the year, we see an interest in cheeseboards so much more during the holidays,” said Abby Despins, Senior Public Relations Manager at Emmi Roth. “It’s a great time to do grab-and-go, like at holiday parties, so a lot of people typically do cheeseboards around this time. Great occasions are also tailgating and football. You can do a really great cheeseboard with beef sticks and snacking foods, pair it with spicy cheeses for tailgates or watching the game, and it’s also amazing what you can do for a dinner party. It doesn’t always have to be a big, huge celebration or major event to do it, either. It’s a nice thing to put out before dinner to graze on. There are major events it works well for, but a cheeseboard is a really easy thing to do for a dinner party or just having people over on a Saturday night.”

However, to even get started, a great cheeseboard requires the right tools for form and function. Despins said she often turns to a chef’s knife for a lot of cheeses, but also said it’s important to have the right knife for the right cheeses ― like a skeleton knife for soft cheeses like brie, camembert or Roth Monroe, a limited-production cheese that would stick to a normal blade. To avoid the sticking, a skeleton-style knife like Swissmar‘s Lux Cheese Knife will do the trick, featuring holes in the blade to prevent the cheese from sticking, forged construction for strength and a forked tip for serving, with an elegant black Micarta handle. Boska offers an alternative to skeleton blades from its Pro Collection called the Brie Knife Monaco, which doesn’t feature holes in the blade like other soft-cheese knives but instead has a long, thin blade, made from a single piece of stainless steel.

For harder cheeses, Despins recommends a cheese plane, “a kind of triangle-shaped knife with a slot in the middle; you can scrape your harder cheeses into thinner slices with those, and that’s a nice one to always have on hand.” However, she also said to have a parmesan knife for even harder cheeses, like Granqueso®, because they crumble and it’s often better to break them up instead of slicing them into triangles. Boska offers the Parmesan Knife Monaco in its Pro Collection, with a pointed oval blade and a single-steel construction for control and durability while breaking up those hard cheeses.

For a go-to knife to use for most cheeses, Swissmar also offers a Universal Cheese Knife in stainless steel. “Having a classic knife available is always nice for stock,” said Despins. They’re all very useful, and it depends on how much of a connoisseur a consumer is, but if someone’s shopping cheese knives in general, even looking in that direction, they probably care quite a bit about what they’re choosing.

Having individual knives for individual cheeses is crucial for anyone who wants to preserve the distinct flavors of each cheese on a board, according to Herb Eckhouse, co-Owner of La Quercia, which produces artisan cured meats in Iowa. “If you’re going to have different types of cheese, you’re going to want one implement per cheese,” he said. “If you have a harder cheese like a Parmigiano that you’re cutting with a spade knife, you don’t want to be using that on your blue cheese, or the knife you’re using on your triple cream on your blue cheese, so I think you need one knife per cheese if you’re putting them out there to cut.”

Herb Eckhouse’s wife and fellow La Quercia co-Owner Kathy Eckhouse added that having knives on the board is important for presentation as well, and to lessen any anxiety guests might have about cutting their own cheese. “I love to leave the cheeses uncut,” she said. “You have to monitor it a bit because some people really make a mess of it, though. I like to have a really attractive whole piece of cheese on the board, and then some cut up with it as an indicator of how to do it correctly.”
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Another crucial component that literally supports the entire cheeseboard is the board itself ― both visually and physically, whether it’s wood or marble or otherwise. “Your board is definitely key,” said Despins. “That’s a lot of what people are going to remember, is how beautiful your board is, the ones that you choose. You can find some really great cheeseboards these days for prices that are reasonable.” She said she prefers marbles over woods because if cheese sits out for a long time at a gathering, the oils can stain the wood. “I prefer to put cheese on marble boards when I serve at home because it keeps my boards looking fresh for longer,” she said. “If you’re going to go with a wood board, definitely get something that’s really nice, that won’t stain. Spend a little more on it to make sure it’s something nice.” One of the high-quality wood options is the Cheese Board Friends XL from Boska, a large, round European oak board that’s practical for multiple cheeses and pairings with plenty of room for cutting. A little hand soap and a rub with olive oil is all that’s needed to maintain it after use. And in addition to wood and marble, cheeseboards come in slate, like Brooklyn Slate Co.‘s Slate Cheese Board, available in four sizes, in red or black, sourced from the company’s family slate quarry in upstate New York, packaged in a burlap bag with soapstone chalk that allows users to write on the board. The option of writing on the board could let party hosts label cheeses or draw fun designs to make the spread even more memorable.

The cheese itself, along with the pairings to match, is just as important or more so than the tools when getting creative with a cheeseboard. “What’s nice is to have fairly large pieces of cheese, maybe three distinct kinds,” said Kathy Eckhouse. “They look so pretty when the pieces are big.” Herb Eckhouse added that the right choices of meats and cheeses compliments guests on their taste and displays knowledge of what’s going on in the food world ― for example, that American charcuterie like the cured meats by La Quercia is gaining traction ― so it’s important to have a good combination. “There are two basic schools: One is contrast, and the other is complement,” he said. “I’m probably more in the complement side, where I like to have things that are complementary flavors, not highly contrasting flavors. If you have a Parmigiano, an Alpine cheese, an Alpha Tolman from [Cellars at] Jasper Hill, those have a lot of umami flavor that you get with a plain prosciutto.”

The Eckhouses recommended dried fruit, nuts, fennel or cherry tomatoes as a contrasting palate cleanser between cheeses and meats. “If you’re trying to make a statement, you want to communicate that you have the full lexicon,” Herb Eckhouse said. As for the main meats and cheeses, they said it’s important to set up the board so guests don’t get a blast of flavor from the get-go. “It’s really important you don’t put anything on the board that blows your mouth out, where that’s all you can taste,” said Kathy Eckhouse. “One of the phrases we like to use about our meats is that we want them to play well with others. They’ll share the world with other flavors and don’t take over. You don’t want to taste just one thing for the next two hours. There can be a star of the show, but the star shouldn’t preempt every other performer from having a moment. Each item needs to share the space.”

Herb Eckhouse said if hosts start the board with an extremely spicy meat or cheese, “it’s difficult to taste anything else. We would recommend arranging boards in accordance with intensity of flavor. You don’t want to eat the most intense flavors first; you want to eat the most delicate flavors first and progress to the more intense flavors. The idea is that once you take the volume up high, it’s harder to hear the softer tones.”

Retailers who can make a statement with a cheeseboard using their own products in the store have a good chance of extending sales. “I would recommend, especially during the holidays, creating cheeseboards in-store,” said Despins. “A lot of cheese buyers, especially if they’re not connoisseurs, don’t know where to start. The best thing people can do with this is cross-promote products; if you have a selection of cheeses, put some jams and nuts and crackers with them, pull them all together and sell them together. Even sell them with the cheese knives ― here’s the cheese, here’s the knife you need, here’s a great pairing ― and there’s no question, they can just walk up and shop and have everything they need to put together a great cheeseboard. Consumers want help with cheese; it’s much like wine, where we can love it and feel like we know it, but there’s always more to know. Any help you can give consumers is great, so tell them about pairings you’ve tried or knives you’ve used with a cheese. Consumers are hungry for that, they want that direction, so any cross-promotion ideas are a great way to help the consumer along and sell more products.”

Retailers who want to put out a spread can try looking up cheeseboards on Instagram, which Herb Eckhouse said is full of inspiring cheeseboard artists. “There’s a great flowering of cheeseboard artists out there. If you go on Instagram, there are amazing displays, and I would encourage shop owners to check that out and embrace their artistic tendencies to make something they think is pretty and attractive,” he said. “If they want to throw a couple edible flowers on there, put dried cherries and apricots and cherry tomatoes or whatever, I think they should embrace their artistic instincts ― because really, at the end of the day, if you put out great ingredients it’s going to be fun. You can’t go wrong.” He added that he sees retailers doing small carry-out boards, with a moderate price point for boards that work for two people, to plant the idea in the customers’ heads that it’s something they can do at home. “Some of our retailers are offering in-store eating and dining opportunities, setting up boards there and changing them out on a regular basis,” he said. He also recommended providing recipes online for customers and recommending pairings, and recommending ensembles at stores that sell wines, beers and ciders in addition to tools, meats and cheeses. “I don’t think you can really go wrong with this,” said Kathy Eckhouse. “It’s all food that’s safe at room temperature, it’s all food that people like, so it’s pretty difficult to do it wrong.”

Herb Eckhouse added: “Yeah! The one mistake people should avoid is not trying. You gotta get in the game.”