Cheese is a quintessential part of French culture. It is an example of the extremes the French will go to to produce quality and flavour from a product many believe to be just a useful basic food. Throughout the week we will be tasting various cheeses with carefully chosen wines and fruit and other accompaniments that are based on innovation as well as tradition.

There is evidence of cheese in ancient Sumerian writings of 3000BC. The Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans … but it is the French who have brought the art of cheese making to the fore. Some five hundred or more cheeses come from this country. During your week with us we would hope to consume some fifteen or more different sorts!

We will be looking at the differences of some of these cheeses complimented by carefully chosen wines, breads and fruits. A Roquefort 'Carles' of soft saltiness with a doyenné-du-complice pear and a sip of Banyuls.for instance or a taste of the Pyrenees; an Ossau Iraty Montagne cheese with an Irouleguy Rosé, a slice of quince (with or without the runcible spoon) and some walnut bread.

I remember hating the idea of cheese as a child. "What's for lunch?" we would ask. "Macaroni cheese" would come the reply or: "Cheese rolls". So at home it was either used as a basic flavouring ingredient or crammed between two lumps of plastic and smeared with chutney. Yes, I had been told that it was good for me but I always thought the chutney was there to help it go down like a polio vaccination. I'm surprised I wasn't scarred for life.

Years later came France and the cheesemonger … 'Then felt I like a watcher of the skies, When a new planet swims into his ken'… it was not just the sight of the variety of cheese that one could find at the market, but the beauty of them. All shape and colour and size like shells on a seashore. Some smooth skinned, some richly mould-encrusted, some blue veined, some spilling forth in plenty, some seeped in wine, all enticing. For in the coolness of Monsieur Marty's stall lay the riches of small farms from all over the great hexagon. In the mouth they were salty, nutty, smooth, peppered, pungent, crumbly, creamy and so I could go on.

The art of producing good cheese goes back as far as which cow, which grass, what flowers and what time of year for grazing. Ewe's milk is the most highly concentrated and gives strong robust and full-flavoured cheeses with a lingering aftertaste. This is because a ewe produces at least ten times less milk than a cow per year. The use of raw milk then adds complex tastes and flavours due to the natural bacteria it contains. Pasteurised milk will tend to simplify the flavours. Cheese made from lactic fermentation will be much stronger than those where rennet has been added to speed up coagulation. Then there is the ripening or maturing period ('L'Affinage'). This intensifies the flavour and hardens the texture. A Brie de Meaux for example will be matured for around eight weeks and will result in the soft creamy texture we all know so well. A Brie Noir on the other hand has an 'affinage' of a year and comes out dull brown in colour and thick and velvety in texture. Locals dunk this in their coffee like a biscuit.

There are some thirty six different cheeses in the appellation system. This is the system of quality control that the French are so famous for. An example of this control I quote below for the great Basque cheese Ossau-Iraty-Brebis Pyrenées.

1. No ewe's milk may be made into cheese until 20 days after lambing.
2. Renneting must take place within 48 hours.
3. Coagulation must be obtained by renneting. Any other enzyme, especially of fungal or microbial origin, is forbidden.
4. The term 'montagne' (Ossau Iraty Montagne) may be used only for cheeses made from the milk of ewe's grazing on summer pastures between 10th May and 15th September.
5. Any cheese not conforming to the regulations must be sold as 'fromage de brebis', or sheep's-milk cheese.

So to think of cheese as a basic flavouring ingredient or something to be smeared with chutney to help it go down is a thing of the past. They call the holy trinity of the table; bread, wine and cheese, for the simplicity and ease with which one can acquire and eat it but it is not as simple as it seems. Holy Trinity?? Surely, like there were never three musketeers but four, we cannot forget the d'Artagnan of the group: the apple or pear. All for one and one for all!