The ideal way to select a good cheese is to try a sliver before you buy, as you can in a farmers' market or a boutique cheesery like Evansdale, Whitestone or Gibbston. Unfortunately most of us buy cheese at supermarkets where it's wrapped so you can't even sniff it.
Juliet Harbut, the New Zealand-born, British-based master of cheese, and the driving force behind both the British and New Zealand cheese awards, divides cheese into categories according to the type of rind they grow.
Fresh cheese
Fresh cheeses are eaten with a few days of being made, so they generally have mild flavours and are often best eaten with other ingredients.
Ricotta, quark, cottage cheese, cream cheese and other curd cheeses are often used in desserts.
Feta is a fresh cheese often preserved in brine and sealed in plastic to extend its shelf life. It can be made from cow's goat's or sheep's milk. If it's excessively salty, soak it in cold water or milk for 10-15 minutes. It's a traditional ingredient crumbled into Greek salad.
Stretched curd cheese, like Bocconcini or fresh mozzarella, has an almost rubbery texture.
It's delicious in salads, especially sliced with vine-ripened tomatoes and sprinkled with basil, olive oil and salt and pepper.
Because fresh cheeses are mild, they are good with crisp white wines, like sauvignon blanc or roses. Reds are generally too big and overwhelm the delicate flavour or the cheese.
Soft white rind cheese
These are well known to cheese lovers and come in many forms - the most popular are camembert and brie, and the local farmhouse cheeses from Evansdale, Whitestone and Gibbston. The outside is white and slightly furry, the insides are soft and slightly chalky when young, but develop a soft, almost runny texture and a distinctive flavour with maturity.
Eat it at around the best-by date if you like your cheese mature.
Some double and triple cream white mould cheeses are very rich because of the extra cream added.
These can be grilled or baked, but are best eaten as is.
Depending on their maturity, they go well with whites like riesling, sauvignon, chardonnay, bubblies, and even lighter reds, like pinot noir.
Goat's cheese and sauvignon blanc seem made for each other.
The most popular of these are Edam, Colby and Gouda, with their sweet flavour and smooth, rubbery texture.
At the other end of the flavour and aroma spectrum from these mild cheeses are the bright orange, pungent washed-rind cheese that are rubbed with salt or washed in brine or alcohol, with their soft, custardy texture and creamy flavour, like Brick from Kapiti.
Semi soft cheeses are good grilled but they don't melt into sauces well. Chardonnays or soft fruity reds, like merlot, or an Italian chianti or Chilean cabernet sauvignon, go well with the milder versions.
Washed rind cheeses are delicious just spread on a good bread. Because they are so pungent, they need a strongly flavoured wine like Marlborough sauvignon blanc, a spicy gewurztraminer or pinot gris, or a Hawkes Bay cabernet sauvignon.
Cheddar is the most common hard cheese.
When it's young it's mild and bland, but, like all cheeses, with maturity it gains more flavour. A good aged cheddar has a lovely grainy texture, a hint of sweet nuttiness and a savoury, sharp tang.
Holey Swiss style cheeses, like the nutty, creamy gruyere and the sweeter Emmental, also come into this category.
Parmesan is another popular, well-flavoured hard cheese. It's best freshly grated as the ready-grated stuff loses its flavour.
Parmigiano Reggiano is the original, made in northern Italy from skimmed milk and aged for a couple of years.
These are the most versatile cheeses for cooking. They grate, melt and grill well and blend into many dishes. Parmesan is ideal with pasta sauces or shaved (use a vegetable peeler) into a salad.
Mild cheeses will go well with chardonnays, but older and stronger cheeses can take bigger wines.
Pinot noir, cabernet sauvignon or merlot are good, but really old cheeses go well with fortified wines like port.
Blue cheeses
A penicillin mould is added to the milk, which, in contact with the air turns blue.
Sometimes the young, slightly crumbly cheeses are pierced with stainless steel rods to let the air in and help the mould develop.
Blue cheeses come in many different styles, from mild, soft, creamy, white mould styles like blue bries, to sharp tangy traditional blue vein or rich, piquant, crumbly cheeses like Kikorangi from Kapiti.
Sometimes blue cheese wrapped in plastic becomes damp and salty as the whey is drawn to the outside. Pat the surface just before serving to remove the salt.
Blue cheeses are often used in sauces, although too much can overwhelm other ingredients. They are good in salads - a favourite of mine is a tangy blue vein with tomatoes.
Blues vary from mild and creamy to sharp and pungent and the wine needs to match too. A lighter red, like pinot noir can be good with a creamy blue, but more pungent cheeses call for sweet wines, like late harvest or botrytised wines.
These are flavoured with anything from garlic or smoke to salmon, walnuts, or apricots. While some are no doubt dreamed up by marketers for people who don't know if they like cheese, there are several traditional ones, like the Dutch Kominjekaas, flavoured with cumin seeds.
Some of these can add flavour to pasta or cheese-on-toast, but most are best eaten as they are with bread.
Wine will vary with the flavour. Cumin or caraway cheese will go with a red, but fruit or nut cheese will be better with a sweet wine.
Serving cheese
The French serve cheese after the main and before pudding to finish the wine - an excellent idea.
The cheese board - chose one superb cheese or two or three different styles of cheese to vary the texture and flavour.
Don't have three white mould cheeses or three hard cheeses or three blues. Try something different, perhaps a goat's or sheep's milk cheese or perhaps something from one of the local cheesemakers.
Serve with good bread, perhaps even a flavoured bread like walnut or caraway, but don't let any accompaniments, like pickles or chutneys overwhelm the cheese. Dried fruit and nuts are good, or fruit pastes, like quince pate.
