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At the function to showcase the arrival of the nouveau Beaujolais, held at the Trident, the magnificence of the occasion was marred slightly by the less than vociferous and enthusiastic proclamation that "Nouveau Beaujolais est arrive!" by some of Trident's staff who were clueless about the cultural significance of this event.

For a wine drinking culture, it has the same resonance as a birth in the family. That apart the event was exquisitely orchestrated with some amazing cheese and cold cuts all flown in from Paris courtesy Air France. Cheese and wine go together and such forms the basis of many a Mediterranean lunch, with a loaf of crusty bread.

If we are slowly developing a wine-drinking culture, we have not really developed a cheese-eating culture. The only indigenous cheese I have eaten is the famous yak cheese made from yak's milk replicating Tibetan cheese available in Delhi from Dharamsala. It is highly overrated, salty without any depth of flavour. There is the fabled smoked cheese from Calcutta, known as the 'Bandel cheese', similar to 'Surti paneer', but from cow's milk. There are a few locations where local cheeses are made replicating foreign cheeses such as mozzarella cheese (popular for its use in pizza making), but not the buffalo variety, a mediocre parmesan from Pune and a slightly better version from Pondicherry; and the cheddar, emmanthal as well as the gruyere.

This is rapidly changing. You get excellent buffalo mozzarella from Gurgaon and Goa with the amazing Frederica producing exquisite ricotta as well. With 50 per cent import duty on foreign cheese, poor storage facilities at the ports, and over-pricing at some outlets, particularly for the alleged delicatessens, cheese of any quality is expensive.

How do you assemble a cheese board in these conditions?With great care, I say. As a famous French gastronome was heard to remark, he loathed, "The terrible crowding of the cheese board, where all flavours would merge without managing to fraternise in an inexpressible cacophony." The idea would be to have one cheese per plate, but that would tend to be the other extreme and would be downright boring. So what do we do? We offer about six cheeses, each selected from a different family to create a symphony of flavours.

At the risk of generalising there are broadly six flavours of cheese, the fresh, neutral, mild, pronounced, strong and very strong to the point of stinkiness.A great cheese board should have one of each, and the one family of cheeses to be avoided at all costs are the processed or factory made cheeses. The most popular cheese in India is boursin, marketed by RR Oomerbhoy, but you can have a feta from Greece (although the best is from Bulgaria), a buffalo mozzarella or bochini often used in making that delightful Italian salad, the caprese, with tomatoes and basil leaves.

Amongst the neutral cheeses, myfavourite is the French Paulin. Now we come to the flavoursome cheeses, and here we are talking serious cheese — camembert or brie usually feature in this category.The greatest of the brie is the Brie de Meaux AOC made from raw cow's milk and in circulation from 11th century. The strong cheeses are my own favourite, the stilton, gorgonzola and the inimitable Roquefort, the stinkier the better.

Email: g_javed@dnaindia.net