Cheese Gifting Ideas for NZ

How much cheese per person

Start with what the cheese has to do. If it is the whole meal, people will get through a lot more of it than if it is sitting beside a roast. A gift box usually lands somewhere in between. You are not catering an evening. You are giving someone something good to open on a Thursday.

A retail pack of our gouda is 180 g. That is a useful unit to think in. A pack that size works as part of a board for a small group, or it keeps a household picking away at it across a week.

When you are unsure, add more of the same cheese rather than another kind. A decent wedge of something people like goes further than a scatter of small pieces they have to ration.

Three cheeses, four at most

The temptation with a gift box is to fill it. Resist that. A board with a short list on it gets eaten. A board with everything on it gets picked over, and the rest goes back in the fridge to be dealt with later.

Vary texture instead of adding to the count. Something hard you can shave, something semi-hard you can slice onto a cracker, and something soft to spread. That range does more for a board than another wedge in the same style as the last.

If you are building a box around gouda, Tricolor Gouda comes in a 180 g pack. So does Green Pesto Gouda, and so does Black Lemon Gouda. Packs of matching size stack and wrap tidily, which matters more than it sounds when you are trying to get a lid on the thing.

All of it arrives here as whole wheels from Europe. We cut and pack it in Auckland, so what goes in the box was cut down the road rather than wrapped on the other side of the world.

What goes with them

Keep the supporting cast quiet. A plain cracker and a decent loaf will carry everything on the board, and neither of them argues with the cheese.

Then add something sharp to cut through. Pickles, chutney, or a jar of something tart. Fruit does the same job in a softer way: grapes, pear, apple, or dried apricots when nothing fresh is in season.

Nuts are worth including if you have room. Walnuts and almonds give people something to do between bites.

Honey is the one sweet thing that earns its place, particularly next to a hard cheese.

If the box is a gift, leave out anything that needs assembling on arrival. The person opening it should be able to eat within minutes, not go shopping first.

Putting it together the night before

Build the box the evening before and your morning gets a lot calmer. Cut what needs cutting, wrap each cheese separately so the flavours stay where they belong, and put the whole lot back in the fridge overnight.

The packs ask you to keep them refrigerated between +1°C to + 5°C. Stick to that until the last moment, then take the cheese out well ahead of when you want to serve it. Cold cheese is closed up and hard to taste.

If you are driving it somewhere, plan the cold part of the trip first. A chilly bin and a supermarket ice pack will do it.

There is more on wrapping and keeping in How to Store & Handle Artisan Cheese.

If you would rather we did it

Some gifts are not worth your evening. If you are sending something to a client, a team, or a whole office, we will cut, pack and put the box together for you here in Auckland.

Tell us roughly who it is for and how much you want to spend, and we will build it. Start at Corporate Cheese Gifts & Hampers NZ.