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How to Label a Black Charcuterie Board the Right Way

You’ve done the shopping, cleaned the house, and arranged a beautiful spread for a festive cheese party. But there’s one more step before your charcuterie board is ready for your guests to enjoy: labeling each cheese.

With a black cheese board, it’s easy to do—but there are plenty of ways to label a charcuterie board properly. Here are some of our favorites.

Use cheese markers, sign holders, table signs, or flags.

round black slate cheese board with piece of cheese, wooden knife, and chalk

An easy way for your guests to identify which cheese they’re eating is to insert clear, easy-to-read signage right into the cheese, whether it’s a wheel of Brie or an artfully arranged stack of Manchego triangles. You can purchase reusable cheese markers that you can label with a marker and then erase, or use disposable signage made of paper or wood.

You can also purchase affordable and unobtrusive cheese sign holders made of wood, metal, glass, or stone that are meant to sit on the table or board next to the item they’re describing. (Your local cheese shop probably uses these to label the cheeses in their case.) Some are erasable and reusable, while others have slots or clamps in which to insert and remove disposable paper signs.

Print out a map or menu to guide guests through your cheese board.

round black slate cheese board coered with cheese and fruit with olives, berries, napkin, and knife

If you don’t want to distract from your beautifully designed cheese board with a bunch of labels, you can design and print a menu or map for your guests to follow along with. A menu-style guide might include the cheese name, the producer, the style, and maybe even tasting notes or a sensory description, which could include visual cues.

Another creative way to label a cheese board is to create or draw a “map” to label your cheese board, either by hand or online. If you’ve got the visual arts or design skills, your guests are sure to be impressed, but this idea is easier for some to pull off than others.

Label each cheese right on the board.

black cheese board with cheese, crackers, and chocolate

In our view, the easiest and most elegant solution for labeling a cheese or charcuterie board is to write the name of each cheese right on the board. But not all boards are created equal in this regard.

Writable cheese boards must be made of certain kinds of material. You can write on a glass or glazed ceramic charcuterie platter with a dry-erase or wet-erase marker—just avoid permanent markers like Sharpies, and be sure to keep the food from making contact with the ink.

Black charcuterie boards made of materials like slate or PaperStone® can be written on with regular chalk, but chalk can be dusty. That’s not something we want on our beautiful board. Classroom chalk also disappears quickly as you use it.

There’s a better way to label black charcuterie boards. Also called steatite, this soft, dense white mineral is perfect for temporary writing on dark surfaces like slate, and it lasts much longer than regular chalk.

Each of Cheese Grotto’s black cheese boards comes with a piece of beautiful soapstone chalk included. In addition to offering a dark, dramatic surface that makes your cheeses and accompaniments look even more delicious, each one is writable and erasable.

Round Black Slate Cheese Board

round black slate cheese board with wedge of cheese and knife

Made of beautifully textured natural slate, our Circular Serving Slate Set lends timeless elegance to any table. Each set comes with soapstone chalk for labeling cheeses on the serving surface, plus a contrasting hand-carved bamboo cheese knife.

Sustainable Black Cheese Board Gift Set

black cheese board gift set with chalk and bow

Our Sustainable Black Cheese Board and Knife Gift Set is a more durable, budget-friendly take on the classic slate serving board. Made from recycled materials and virtually unbreakable, it’s lightweight and dishwasher safe. It even comes with a matching writable black cheese knife so you can let your guests know which knife to use with which cheese.

Black Cheese Grotto Shelves

When you purchase one of our four different Cheese Grotto models, you can customize your selection. Choose shelving made from the original bamboo, or opt for sleek black shelves made from PaperStone® or Richlite®.

These black cheese boards are unbreakable, certified sustainable, and sized to slide perfectly into the appropriate model of Cheese Grotto. Whichever Grotto you choose, there’s a black board that fits. They also make great standalone cheese boards, too.

Best of all, each one comes with a piece of soapstone chalk included, so you can label your charcuterie boards the right way.

How do you like to label your cheese boards? Tag us @cheesegrotto on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter and let us know!

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