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Patrick McGuigan and Carlos Yescas, "One Cheese to Rule Them All: In Search of the World's 100 Best Cheeses" (Murdoch Books, 2025)
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- [00:00]
A
Hello, everybody. This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:07]
B
Hello, and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm very pleased today to have both of the authors with me of a fascinating and honestly, quite funny in some senses, but also information packed book titled One Cheese to Rule Them All In Search of the World's 100 Best Cheeses, published by Murdoch Books in 2025. And the book really does what it says. There's a whole bunch of cheeses, more than we could possibly talk about in the time allotted, but also a lot of information about how to think about the world of cheese. And who better than to guide us on this journey than two of the top cheese judges? Yes, that is a thing in the world who have written this book together. So I'm very pleased to welcome Patrick McGuigan and Carlos Jessica to the podcast to tell us about this project. Patrick and Carlos, thank you so much for joining me.
- [02:01]
C
Oh, thank you so much. What a lovely introduction. We're so happy to be here.
- [02:06]
B
Well, speaking of introductions, could you each please briefly introduce yourselves and then tell us why you decided to write this book and do it together? Patrick, do you want to start?
- [02:16]
D
Yeah. So My name's Patrick McGuigan. I'm a cheese writer. So I've written three books on cheese. I'm also a journalist, so I write a lot for newspapers and magazines on cheese. And also I sort of educate as well. So I teach qualifications and do training in cheese.
- [02:35]
C
And Carlos, I am Carlos Jeskas. I am a cheese scholar. So I do a lot of research on cheese, not only on production methods, but also on politics and marketing and a lot of other things that have to do with why we eat the cheese that we eat. And yeah, I have written a book before on the cheeses of Mexico and wanted to write another book. And so I came up with this idea and invited my very good friend Patrick to write it with me, or for us to write it together, rather.
- [03:14]
B
Yeah, I mean, just from those introductions alone, it makes clear why you would sort of team up and the many things you could bring to this. Thinking then, about approaching the project, obviously, it's in search of the world's 100 best cheeses. Did you know that going in, like, was it always going to be a hundred? If so, why a hundred? Like, how did you choose what to include in this massive scope?
- [03:36]
D
Well, I think we probably need to take a step back, Miranda, and just the origins of the idea were a competition called the World Cheese Awards, which I don't know if you've heard of, but in the cheese world, it's quite a big, big deal. It's an annual competition that takes place in different cities so far in Europe. And essentially it's kind of like the Olympics of cheese. And you get. Well, the last one there was over 5,000 cheeses from all over the world are gathered in one room and then are judged by well over 250 cheese experts from around the world. And Carlos and I have both been judges on that. On the World Cheese Awards for well over 10 years now. And, you know, we became friends judging cheese together. And so we use the World Cheese Awards as a basis for the book. It's been running since 1988. It's organized by a company called the Guild of Fine Food. And they kindly allowed us to go through their archives and look at, well, more than 35 years of almost 35 years of cheese. Cheese winners and award winners. And it was from that list, from that data, that we narrowed it down to 100. Why 100? Well, it's just a nice round number, isn't it, really? And was tricky. I mean, we. We went on cheeses that had won lots of awards, but there was also quite a lot of Carlos and I, our kind of opinions and knowledge around cheese of really what are interesting which cheeses that had stories to tell about the wider world, about culture, economics, religion, you know, the environment. So it was a mix of using the awards, but also our own opinions and ideas around cheese. And also some of our favourites that we just love and we wanted to put in the book, you know, I.
- [05:50]
B
Mean, why not, right? When you have a book like this. Let's go for it. Now, we are definitely going to talk about the awards in a bit more detail because the both of you have a very interesting perspective on it. But before we get into those details, staying in the kind of big picture moment a little bit further, Carlos, can you tell us maybe a little bit about who you hope reads the book and what you want them to take away from it? Like, you don't have to be a cheese judge, right, to enjoy this?
- [06:15]
C
Yeah, absolutely not. I think we want our audience, or we always imagine the audience where we were writing. Sort of someone who normally goes to the cheese shop or the cheese counter and enjoys a bit of cheese every other week, maybe, and they're interested in what they're eating, they're interested in general about food. And this is kind of a gateway to get them to read not only about a cheese that maybe they already love or maybe a new cheese that they are trying for the first time and then getting a little bit of history and politics and economics and all sorts of other things within each one of the entries that we have of 100 cheeses. And I guess what we hope that they get is a sense that this is a full world out there of cheese and that connects a lot of the big topics in the world. But it doesn't have to be complicated or boring. It can just be really fun and funny to be thinking about cheese and enjoying hopefully some of that cheese when you're reading it.
- [07:25]
B
Yeah, I definitely would not recommend reading this book when hungry. It definitely doesn't help with that. But there is, as Carlos, you mentioned, this whole world to get into. So can we pick up on what Patrick mentioned earlier of the World Cheese Awards that sounds like this kind of epic title. Are they doing how and why did these awards start?
- [07:46]
D
Well, they, like I said earlier, is a company called the Guild of Fine Food based in the uk. Just to be clear, I'm British and I'm based in the uk. Carlos is originally from Mexico, spent a long time in the us, so we felt we had a good sort of spread of knowledge, if you. If you like. Carlos also now lives in the uk, but the World Cheese Awards is really a genuinely global competition. And you get cheeses entered from, I think it's over 40 countries, Japanese cheeses, cheeses from South Africa, Australia, Latin America, the US, all over Europe. But when they first started in 1988 by the guild of Fine Food, it was really just a way to sort of shine a light on, on, you know, some of the perhaps lesser known sort of French cheeses, really in 1988 in the UK, you know, cheese at that point, you know, things like brie de meaux and parmesan were seen as being quite exotic and sort of, you know, unusual cheeses in the uk. So the awards was initially set up in quite a small way just to raised a profile of, I suppose, European cheeses. But it's grown over the decades massively and is really a way. It's a celebration of cheese makers around the world and the different styles and the different stories and sort of cultural influences that go into making the cheese. And essentially that's what the awards are there for, to shine a light on this world of good cheese wherever it's made.
- [09:39]
B
And it is now across so many different countries. The cheese is in the book as well. So I'm glad we've kind of made that point early in our discussion. But of course, the two of you are not just involved with these awards sort of as observers. You're not even just judges. You're on a thing called the Super Jury Panel. What's that?
- [09:58]
C
Yeah, this is really funny because actually Patrick and I, for the first time this year, are not in the Super Jury. We have been many years, but we have retired, graduated, age out, I don't know yet. But the Super Jury is a panel of 14 people who are judges themselves and have a lot of experience and wealth of knowledge of different styles, different categories, and have traveled a lot like we have and tasted a lot of cheese. And then they're chosen by the organization, the Guild of Fine Foods, to sort of adjudicate that last round to choose out of 100 odd cheeses, 14 that have the possibility of becoming the best cheese in the world. And then they tasted them again. They both in a live, online and on TV presentation, and they choose the best cheese in the world. And so this Super Jury panel is not only formed by people who are really knowledgeable and really dedicated to cheese, but people who also have worked really hard in their own cultures or in their own countries to sort of highlight the cheeses of the regions and have really brought to the rest of us a lot of a wealth of knowledge. So, you know, the Super Jury both Recognizes someone who's really knowledgeable, but also the person sitting in that panel has the huge responsibility of then choosing what is becoming the best cheese in the world for that year.
- [11:41]
B
So what are they looking for? Like, what does it take for a cheese to win and what happens if a cheese does win? Like, how big a deal is it to get that accolade?
- [11:50]
C
Well, the Super Yuri, they, you know, it's a voting process and people give different marks and then, you know, it gets tallied up at the end and we have one winner at the end of the awards. They are looking for different things. They're looking for things that are unique, things that are very well made, things that sort of express the intention of the cheesemaker, probably also express the place of origin that a cheese is coming from. Of course, the judges don't know what cheese is coming from where it is specifically, but you can say a lot about if it's a mountain cheese or is a cheese that has been made in an alpine region or is made as opposed to a valley. And what judges are really looking for is something that is quite remarkable. And so two things happen when a cheese wins. The first thing is it changes the life of the cheesemaker forever. Right? Like to be named the producer of the best cheese in the world changes your life forever. That not only stays with the cheesemaker, it also impacts the immediate community, the family, the people who work with them. But many times it ends up impacting the entire region with that cheese is made. And, you know, the economy changes because this cheese has now become so important. And there's tourism and of course there's a pressure to grow and make more cheese and have more animals. And the fame of having one sort of carries many cheese makers into the future. And they change the companies and they change the regions, I think for the best. I think that the best example of this is what happened in Norway, that before Norway won when the Warchess Awards were in San Sebastian, Norwegian Blue won. And after that, Norway has hosted the Warchess Awards two times and has won the Warchester was three times. And so it really does change a lot of things for, you know, the cheesemaker of the country and, you know, the world in cheesing jar.
- [14:09]
B
That's helpful to understand the impact of it getting into then some of the history of all of this. What sorts of cheeses won first when this was started and why was it those cheeses that took first prize?
- [14:22]
D
Well, the very first cheese, actually, we don't feature it in the book because it's no longer made, it's become an extinct cheese. But in 1988, I think there were only a couple of hundred entries in 1988 when it first started in London, and I think by all accounts most of those were British. So it started. The World Cheese Awards started out on quite a small scale and the winning cheese was a blue Cheshire. I don't know if your listeners will be familiar with Cheshire, but it's a sort of crumbly cow's milk cheese from the north west of England and then sometimes it will go blue because it has this quite open texture and you get blue veining in. So the very first winner back in 1988 was a group captain. Hutchinson Smith was his name and he'd been a. He'd thrown in the RAF actually, and he'd done a flyover to celebrate the Jubilee and things like that. He was a real sort of dashing character when he left the raf, had set up a. A cheese business with his wife. So they won the award. I think there was, I think 250 cheeses were entered. Half of them were British. There were only 19 judges in total. But even back then when the Hutchinson Smiths won, it really helped their business and they grew the business and became sort of the largest blue cheese maker in Britain and were swiftly snapped up by a big Stilton producer who seemed to. They tried to make blue Cheshire for a few years and then just eventually they stopped making it and the cheese died out. So, you know, I suppose those early years, if you look, we split the book into different decades and we've got sort of late 80s and 90s is our first section and the cheeses in that section are the real big hitters that sort of, everybody knows, you know, there's Brie de meaux, there's cheddar, there's a Le Gruyere from Switzerland. And I think that kind of reflected where cheese was at that time. Parmigiano, Reggiano's, another one, Pecorino, Stilton. And it really. These were the specialty cheeses of their day. And, you know, like I was saying earlier in, in the uk, these cheeses would have seemed quite exotic. So in a way, the book, the different sections in the book track how not just sort of the cheese industry has changed over the decades, but I think the wider food industry and food trends in that it's a much more global world now where we can buy, you know, we eat in restaurants that are Japanese or Vietnamese or, you know, Italian, French. But back in the 80s, it was sort of the infancy of that kind of food revolution that we've all enjoyed over the past sort of 35 years.
- [17:40]
B
Why was that period of the sort of late 80s, 90s such a key moment for, for instance, British cheats?
- [17:47]
D
Yeah, well, gosh, it's, these are the, I think a lot of it is to do in Britain particularly is we lost our cheese culture really in the 20th century. Up until the sort of late 80s, I suppose the 1980s, we started to rediscover and fall in love with food again. But if you look at cheese specifically, you know, at the beginning of the 20th century, before the First World War, there were around three and a half thousand farmhouse cheese makers in the UK and these were, you know, farmers on their own farm using their own milk to make very small amounts of handmade cheese. And if you come to post the Second World War, there were fewer than a hundred. So there was a massive decline in this kind of artisan farmhouse cheese making which was linked to the two wars, you know, and, and obviously the disruption and loss of life. Also things like rationing. In the UK we had rationing until 1954, which really affect, you know, cheese was quite centralized in its production at that point. The government also paid quite, quite a good price for milk. They underpinned the milk market. And so farmers, it was easier to sell milk than make cheese. So for all those reasons, basically artisan cheese in the UK died out. In France and Italy that didn't happen to the same degree and they've held onto their traditions. But I think in the 80s, it was the beginning of things like international travel, cheap flights to Spain and France to go on holiday. And people started to taste these amazing foods while they were away on holiday and would come back and, and want to, want to buy them and try them at home. And you sort of got the rise of celebrity chefs, TV food shows, you know, and sort of the restaurant scene in the 90s in London particularly really took off. And so, you know, on the back of that, more cheesemakers started to, to set up again and Britain sort of rediscovered its cheese making history and traditions. It's a similar story if you look in the US actually, and even Spain as well. And there are quite a lot of countries that went through this kind of post war industrialization of cheese and then have sort of rediscovered good food in the 80s, 90s and, and ever since.
- [20:30]
B
Definitely interesting to think about kind of how that happened in terms of what that meant then for the Cheese Awards. Obviously. Patrick, you mentioned that at the beginning it was kind of a Small thing, looking to sort of get more names recognised. Then we have this boom in British cheese. Obviously, I don't remember now which of you mentioned that the awards have always been held in Europe, at least so far, but that it isn't always kind of the big hitters, it isn't always France. Right. Carlos, you mentioned Norway. What about outside of Europe? Do we see sort of change as the awards develop into the 21st century that kind of expands out what sorts of cheeses win?
- [21:07]
C
Yeah, we. So the first thing, I guess that happens, and these are decisions that may not seem very deliberate at the moment, but the Guild of Fine Food decides to host the competition outside of England and takes it to Ireland for the first time. And in Ireland, a cheese from the Canary Islands wins still a European cheese. If we think that the Canary Islands are European, but that's a different conversation, what really happens is that I think we start seeing how different groups of judges end up choosing different types of cheeses because they have different palates, different understandings of what their tastes are and all that. Anyway, so we go into the first awards in the Canary Islands and that's when I joined the Worcester Awards as a judge. I was the first judge from outside of Europe to join just as a judge. There was, I think, two Americans and a Canadian. And so this was already an expansion that the Guild of Fives wanted to have judges from other parts of the world. I don't think they were thinking yet about cheeses from other parts of the world, but they were definitely thinking about judges. And so then when I was there, I, you know, I met a lot of wonderful people. And one of the things that I thought is like, this is interesting that there's no Mexican cheese and there is no, there wasn't really much American cheese in competition either. There was no know cheese from Argentina or even Brazil, which to me being from Mexico are the big cheese countries. And then on the other hand, there were no cheeses from anywhere else. And so that in many conversations since then that I have had with John Farran, who is the person who is the president of the, of the guild and his dad at that time, we talked a lot about what it meant to open up and be the World Cheese Awards. And so we started opening up and setting up something that is quite unique to the Worches Awards, which is the consolidation points. So these are representatives of the guild that are outside of Europe and they are collecting cheeses for competition. And this is important because if you imagine that you are, let's say in Colombia, and you're a small rural producer in Colombia, you may not have the ability to go to the capital city, put a package of one cheese to be sent the other side of the world and hope that it wins. We really needed to create a system that will allow for that competitor in Colombia, rural Colombia, to have the same chances that someone in France, for example, will have. So the consolidations points have helped a lot. And so once consolidations were points were created in, in first in Mexico, then in Brazil, but then there was one created in, in India and South Africa. You start seeing metals for those cheeses for those countries. And that is because the logistics have been figured out for them. And so the cheese maker can focus on making good cheese and just entering the competition and then everything else is handled. And so, you know, some cheeses don't arrive in the best conditions because of transport, but judges at the beginning of the competition are told really specifically disregard any, any troubles that these cheese have may have had in transit. Let's say that you know, a box falling on top of the cheese, so don't, don't overjudge it because you know, it's wonky on one side. And then we start seeing that a lot of those cheeses from outside of not only, not only Europe, but we start seeing cheeses from Eastern Europe to also start winning medals. And that changes the dynamics completely of the World CHIS Awards, not only because it requires the guild to recruit judges from many more countries. So there's 44 nations represented in the judges. There are now or the most recent. There were cheeses from 44 nations as well. And that just keeps growing. And you know, now the, the, some of the non European cheeses are getting to the top level at the superiority and it will eventually be that, that, that a cheese from, from you know, say New World cheese is winning. That with the caveat that there has already been a world champion from Canada and a world champion from the United States.
- [26:23]
B
That's really cool to hear about the behind the scenes aspects of it because of course the logistics do matter. As soon as you explain it, it's like, oh yeah, of course that would be a key part of this. But isn't something that inevitably would kind of get attention or the thought that is necessary for it to happen. So I think that gives us a good sense then of the World Cheese Awards and how they work. I'd love to dive then into some of the specific cheeses talked about in the book. Obviously given search of the world's 100 best cheeses we're not going to cover all of them. So I've sort of picked out a few maybe for us to talk about. One theme, I suppose that I kind of kept coming across was the link between the name of the cheese and where they're made. And there's so many of them all over the world where kind of, oh, that's an intriguing name. I wonder how they came up with that. And you do a little bit of research and go, oh, that's the name of the town. Right, okay, that makes sense. But that's not the case every time we might think it is. Right. Cheddar is an actual place, but the famous cheese called cheddar isn't necessarily made there. Caerphilly, also not necessarily made in Caerphilly. Stilton, maybe not made in Stilton. So what's going on with instances where the name isn't linking to the place, even if it is an actual place?
- [27:39]
D
Oh, you've dived into the world of cheese names and they can be quite a controversial area, actually, how you. You know how an a cheese is named and then whether it's actually made in the place where it originally came from. And it's. It's complicated. I mean, so let's take cheddar. Cheddar's a good example because everybody makes cheddar, you know, all over the world. Every country makes cheddar. You know, most. A lot of the cheddar that we buy in the UK is actually made in Ireland. The US makes and Canada make huge amounts of cheddar. Australia also. But you're right, so there is a village called Cheddar in Somerset, and that is where cheddar cheese first came from and first became famous. And then over the centuries, the technology for making cheddar cheese and the knowledge of how to make it has spread. And so you can make cheddar anywhere with some cheeses, you can protect the name if you're quick enough. And there's enough cheese makers in a particular area who get together and can apply for kind of legal protection. So it's very similar to wine, if you think of like champagne can only be made in the Champagne region. Quite a lot of famous European cheeses are protected in, under the same rules and sort of have their own appellations. So if you think of Roquefort or Conte Parmigiano, Reggiano, they are legally protected and must be made in the regions where they're originally from. The problem with cheddar is cheddar makers in Somerset didn't get together quickly enough and weren't smart enough to protect their amazing cheese. And by the time they thought about, you know, got around to thinking, well, let's get some legal protection for this, the horse had bolted, if you like, and it was being made all over the world. And if they tried to protect it, there would have been so many objections, they would have failed. And the same is true with Caerphilly, actually. So Caerphilly is a place in Wales. There is actually no Caerphilly cheese made in Caerphilly. Actually, a lot of Caerphilly is now made in England because, you know, over time, the production of the cheese spread and by the time people thought about, you know, protecting the name Caerphilly, it'd gone too far. Having said that, with Caerphilly, this is where it gets complicated. I did warn you. Welsh cheesemakers did get together and get a legal protection for the. Not for the name Caerphilly, but for the name traditional Welsh Caerphilly. So if you see traditional Welsh Caerphilly on a cheese, it means it's been made in Wales. Not necessarily in Caerphilly, but in. At least it's been made in Wales. Those protections are very EU and British, so actually they're not recognized in countries like the us for example. So it's why there's often quite a lot of discussions at big trade talks about Parmigiano, Reggiano. The Italians want Americans to recognize that Parmesan can only come from northern Italy, where it's always come from. But of course, quite a lot of Parmesan is also made in the us and the US doesn't recognize these protected schemes. So it's a complicated world. The stage. Can I just finish? I know it's complex, but the story of Stilton is one of the great pub quiz questions, is.
- [31:27]
B
It is, yeah.
- [31:28]
D
So Stilton, there's a village called Stilton in Cambridgeshire, but you legally can't make Stilton cheese in Stilton because the protected state. Stilton is a protected cheese, a British blue cheese, and it can only be made in Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Leicestershire, not Cambridgeshire. And the reason that the. The cheese has the name Stilton is because historically the cheese was made in the Midlands, but then on its way down to London, there was a pub in the village of Stilton where it was traded and it became known as Stilton cheese, even though it wasn't made there. So it's the great pub quiz. You know, which cheese can't be made in the village it's named after. The answer is Stilton.
- [32:19]
B
No. That's absolutely brilliant. I'm glad we got to cover that question there. When we're talking, though, about regulations around cheese and what is and isn't protected as you've described it is sometimes the name. But there's all sorts of other aspects that can be protected and regulated beyond the name, some of which I was sort of expecting to read about. Like, oh, this one has to be cow's milk versus goat's milk. Like, okay, cool. Familiar with that. Some of them get pretty detailed pretty fast, though. Formed on bear, for example. I was like, whoa. Really? Okay, so can you give us some instances of maybe more esoteric aspects that can be regulated?
- [32:59]
C
Yeah, this, I feel, is a good question for me, having trained as a lawyer. You know, I love this minutiae of the weirdness. And then what is it actually codifying? So Fondenberg is interesting because it is a cheese that is very ancient. It's made with cow's milk, and it's a big cylinder, a tall cylinder type of cheese. And it's actually a blue cheese that is aged for very little time, 28 days. So while it has very intense sort of pecan blue notes, it could be really way more intense if it was aged for longer. But the producers of formed and bird have not only protected the geographical area, which is, I think, five cantals and eight communes of France where the cheese can be made, but that also says not only about the origin, but also talks about all the feed that the cows need to eat has to come from this area. And all of the feed that and the animals have to be out in pasture. So eating outside at least for five months. And, you know, that obviously depends on the weather, you know, how long they can be outside. Sometimes it's too hot now in France, or sometimes it's actually quite cold. And so, you know, the animals sometimes need to just be inside so that they don't dehydrate or are freezing. The other thing that is interesting about this is that that production area of the grasses that they eat has to be between 600 meters and 1600 meters above sea level. So it is sort of that cool climate of mountain climate. Not totally of the mountains, but definitely there is a type of soil that develops in that area that feeds the grasses that feed the animal and creates a very specific type of cheese. The, you know, foam Dunburt basically protects a lot of things. The shape that it is, the mold that is used, the type of feed that the animals are Eating how long it has to be the type of feeding, the animal, husbandry practices of actually being outside. So they go into quite an extent. One of the things that obviously is interesting that, you know, we would like to think that these are perfect systems, but sometimes they're a little wonky. They do allow for three types of milk, and that means you can find Fontaineburg that is made with raw milk so that it has been used just as it comes out of the animal. It also can be thermalized, so partly warmed up. And then it also can be made with pasteurized milk. However, although they allow for all these differences, you have to use the milk before 48 hours have passed after collection. So it cannot be milk that you collected at the beginning of the week and you're making cheese at the end of the week. It has to be quite fast. So even if they have a love for pasteurization and thermalization, you need to use that milk right away. And the consortium or the organization that controls form Durnberg is paying attention, attention always, and is making sure that, you know, producers are following the rules because this is what gives formed urban bird is quality, its uniqueness, and is what consumers want to know about the cheese and why they're paying sort of that extra price for a blue cheese that is quite unique.
- [36:50]
E
All right, listen up. Nacho chips, quiet down. Crispy potatoes. This is the moment Velveet been preparing you for, and you're not about to crack under pressure. Today's the day to go all in on the drip. Velveeta's heat neat Queso is the MVP of any game day spread. So stick by them and you'll be golden. Now get out there and make delicious history. No tailgate party is complete without Velveeta.
- [37:19]
B
Yeah, that's a lot of rules and a lot of paying attention, which I found kind of intriguing, both for sort of the specificity of it, but also the idea. I think a lot of us far outside the cheese world, you know, not insiders like the two of you might have, is that there are still some aspects of cheese making that are kind of kept secret, you know?
- [37:36]
C
Ooh.
- [37:37]
B
Well, we're not going to tell you what the recipe for that is, right? But what you've just described there, Carlos, is like, so precise with so many people paying attention that you can't really have any secrets. So are there secrets in cheese making or is it all sort of regulated to some extent at least, like you've just described?
- [37:53]
C
I mean, I think that there is a lot of things that have been sort of studied, codified. And then obviously there's things that have been actually very well regulated, at least in the European system, and are unique. However, when I think about things that are secret still, there's still a lot of things in cheese and cheese microbiologists and people working in that area will tell you that you will still don't understand what is the pathways that are created by yeast bacteria to open up the spaces for molds to grow on rinds. So there's a lot of things that are still learning. So it's not secret in the sense that no one is telling us is that we just don't know yet. And there's a lot of research going into that. And how do you build a good wine? What allows for cheese mites to develop in some cases to not others? And that has to do with, does it have to do with the soil where the cows or the animals were eating? Does it actually have to do with the environment that the cheese was being made? Does it have to do with the type of lactic cultures that are being used? So there's a lot of variables. Cheese is made with four ingredients, milk, lactic cultures, and that's it, sorry, three. And you end up with thousands of different recipes. So there's a lot of nuances there. And those nuances come from these very small places that we're still trying to understand and people are doing a lot of research on it.
- [39:40]
B
Obviously, I've been using my dictatorial powers as the interviewer to choose which cheeses I'm asking you to talk about. But are there any sort of origins stories in particular that are favorites of either of yours that we haven't mentioned yet that we want to put in?
- [39:56]
D
Oh, I, I love the, I mean, cheeses, cheeses are a great way to sort of understand the world around you. I sort of always sort of say they're a bit like a window on the world. And, and there's some really great kind of characters in, in cheese history who have, have been, have sort of fought for, to sort of keep traditions alive or fought for their way of life. The one that I love particularly is with Beaufort, which is a big alpine style cheese made in the savoir. It's similar, I suppose, if you know, Conte or Gruyere, Beaufort in a sort of similar category. And it was really, you know, in the 1960s it was on the verge of extinction. I mean, it's a cheese that's got a history going back six, 700 years. It's sort of the monks used to, used to make it in monasteries. But by the 60s in the savoir it all basically, you know, production had almost died out completely. There were just a few sort of mountain producers left. And part of the problem was things like the skiing industry had set up and there were like big hydroelectric dams being built in the area and you just couldn't get the workers. But there was this sort of one campaigning farmer called Maxim Viale who kind of in the 1960s kind of campaigned really hard, did a big kind of sort of media campaign to fight for Beaufort, that he should not go extinct. And he sort of set up a cooperative dairy with the last remaining Beaufort makers in the mountains and sort of helped, you know, in terms of production, in terms of a little bit of mechanization and around milking and making hay and that sort of thing. And sort of set up the Beaufort Cheese Defense Union and managed to get one of these PDO protected designation of origin labels for Beaufort and really saved the cheese. So when he started his campaign, I think there was about 500 tons being made a year. And now there's around 5,000 tons of Bofor made a year. And there's about 330 farms in the mountains making it. And I've been to visit some of them and they are really amazing places. They're very high up, over 1500 meters high up in the South Wales mountains. And their cows are grazing incredibly diverse pastures. And it's almost like a sort of agro pastoral system where the cows fertilize the land as, as they graze and that allow. And then they're moved on and that allows really diverse sort of, you know, flowers, herbs, wild grasses to grow. I just think it's such a romantic story. It helps that I've been up the mountains and tasted the cheese in a chalet at the top of a mountain. You can't help but get kind of a bit misty eyed about that. Yeah, yeah, it's a pretty good day's work. I like those, I like those sort of renegades and those people who are, you know, apparently Maxime Valet was, was never seen without his beret. He always wore a beret and was a kind of real fire brand farmer and cheese maker. I love that story.
- [43:23]
B
Carlos, is there one you want to.
- [43:25]
C
Throw in coming from the other side of the world and, and all this. I have this affinity of cheeses that, that I think they're starting to maybe disappear because there is pressure from the outside world to follow some health guidelines that are approved at the International Level, which not normally respect artisanal processes, but rather are based on science that is quite, you know, for industrialized food processes. So some of the overuse of lactic cultures and very standardized rennets are starting to impact some cheeses around the world in. And those cheeses are changing flavor. And I was recently in Chile in September last year, and I started noticing these cheeses that were probably very traditional cheeses from Chile. And then there were a couple of producers that were claiming their cheeses to be author cheeses. And these author cheeses were exactly the same as the old traditional ones, but they had different galactic cultures or different processes, and they tasted more European of what the European palette would like. And so I absurd mourn. I am already mourning some of the cheeses that will disappear before we actually know them, because there is this pressure to sort of Europeanize cheese production in so many parts around Latin America. But this is equally happening in India. It's happening in Indonesia. It's happening in some places in Africa.
- [45:17]
B
Yeah, no, that's definitely a very important point when we're thinking about the future of all of this. But, of course, there's also exciting things potentially in the future as well. So, although neither are sitting on the super jury panel this year, can you maybe give us a sense of kind of what's exciting right now in the cheese world and what sorts of things the two of you, from your expert vantage point, are paying attention to going forward?
- [45:42]
D
Actually, the final section of the book is we look to the future. And it was good fun, actually. Carlos and I got to choose cheeses that actually hadn't necessarily done very well in the World Cheese Awards, but we sort of tipped as things going forward. And I think, in a way, there's some exciting developments happening all over the world. I mean, Carlos, you know, can talk maybe a little bit about the new world, as he put it earlier, because there's some really exciting stuff happening in Japan and India and certainly Latin America. But even in, I think it's quite exciting to see, like, in the boundaries, although there are these protected cheeses that kind of enshrine traditional processes, there's also quite a lot of innovation going on. And people are saying, well, actually, I don't want to make what's always been made. And I think it goes back to this international travel and the World Cheese Awards itself, where people meet and share ideas and taste each other's cheeses. So even in France, actually, which is the home of the most traditional cheeses, and they, you know, they have more protected cheeses I think, than anyone else. But there's even sort of new developments, new younger cheesemakers coming in. One one of the cheeses in the book is called Bariquet, which is a goat's cheese which is made in the Loire Valley in a way that's really quite. It sort of borrows from various different French cheese traditions and sort of creates something brand new. It's like a barrel shaped goat's cheese that has this sort of springy texture and then the outside is washed so it's quite sort of funky and meaty. And then they print this amazing kind of like silhouettes of goats and the shepherds around the outside of the cheese using an ingredient called a natto. So the cheese looks like a little barrel. And I've never seen anything like that made well anywhere really. And for that to come out of France is quite exciting and interesting that even the French are experimenting and trying new things. And that's certainly happening in the UK and the US with cheese makers sort of borrowing from different cultures and coming up with hybrids and fusion ideas of different styles of cheese, which is really exciting. I mean, is the same happening in Latin America, Carlos? And when you've been on your travels.
- [48:13]
C
I was actually going to say, but that I recently had Varga in flowers made with a gyrole. So Miranda, you may have seen there's a cheese from Switzerland called Tete de Moin, which is a sort of stubby cheese that is small, round. And the Swiss created a small device that you make small cuttings and you end up with little flowers made of cheese that they're very pretty but also delicious. And you know, it's a machine that was invented for a very specific cheese. And then I have seen other people try to use this machine in other cheeses and not really achieving that level of pretty of the flour. But as I was saying just then, people are using this new cheese, bariquette in the Euro and it's amazing. And you know, the flavor, the cheese has a very delicate flavor. But then when you put in that sort of flour, very airy consistency, it was just so beautiful to eat it. And so I think there is also innovation happening in how cheese is presented, how cheese is eaten as, you know, beyond just what the cheesemakers are doing.
- [49:33]
B
Those are some very cool things to be aware of. Thank you both for giving us those bits to pay attention to going forward. Thinking then about the kind of conclusion of this project. I mean, the title is One Cheese to Rule Them All. So is there One Cheese to Rule Them All? I have to ask.
- [49:51]
D
You're not the only one. I mean that we've kind of. We've made a rod for our own back. Back with that book title a little bit.
- [49:59]
B
Yeah, it's. Right.
- [50:00]
D
Well, my answer is always, well, you'll have to buy the book to find out. That's. But that is a bit of a. That's a bit of a cheat really, isn't it? I mean we, we do go into it, into the conclusion and, and one of the things. So I'm not going to give you a definitive answer. Right. Because.
- [50:19]
B
Yeah, no, you love that.
- [50:21]
D
Yeah. You know, it kind of depends on who you are, what you fancy, what time of day it is. You're having cheese for breakfast, lunch, dinner, you're having a bottle of wine with it or a glass of apple juice. You know, all of these.
- [50:34]
B
In my household there is a category of cheese called afternoon cheese, which is like a whole specific type of cheese. So. Yeah, no, absolutely.
- [50:42]
D
I love, I love that. Afternoon cheese.
- [50:44]
A
Yeah.
- [50:45]
D
Well, breakfast, we have a breakfast cheese in the book actually from the U.S. but yeah, I mean, I think what you can do is you can start to narrow it down by really looking at the World Cheese Awards and what wins. And there are really two types of cheese that are wildly successful at the World Cheese Awards and they are blue cheeses and alpine cheeses and specifically Gruyere. So Gruyere from Switzerland has won the World Cheese Awards more than any other cheese. So that, you know, if you just want to go on what's won the World Cheese Awards the most, it's Le Gruyere and it would be a sort of more aged, you know, 12 to 18 month ligriere. But actually that whole style of sort of sweet nutty cheeses. So that would also include things like Conte Beaufort, Osu Irati, which is made in the Pyrenees but is made with sheep's milk mill. They are Berkeyser as well, from Germany and Austria. They are, they win all the time. There's always at least a few of those types of cheeses in the final. In fact, the, the winner in last year's awards was again a Gruyere. So I think that was the sixth time it's won it. So if you want to, if you wanted to kind of press me, I'd say if you're looking for the best cheese in the world, look for a blue cheese or one of these big alpine sort of sweet, nutty cheeses. Anything else, Carlos, that you would tip people for?
- [52:24]
C
Yeah, I think that I will add to that probably also a Gouda style. I think the Goudas have had a very interesting track record. You know, it's a cheese that is originally from the Netherlands, but then is one of those cheeses that sort of went out into the world and has conquered a lot of palates. And so there has been Gouda winners in a couple of times and there are producers outside of Europe making Gouda styles that are quite good. And so I think that that will probably be also up there in the type of cheese that people really like and wins a lot of medals and is easy to eat and easy to find as well.
- [53:12]
D
Yeah, that's definitely helpful. That fits the sweet, nutty, hard kind of characteristic, which, you know. Gouda, Gouda, Gouda, Gouda, however you want to say it, that is in the. It has similarities to those alpine cheeses, actually. There's a lot of bad goudo in the world, though.
- [53:35]
B
Well, so let's focus on good cheese. Let's focus on cheese that we're excited about. You've given some good tips, I think, to people to make sure that they can find something satisfying. And it sounds like chewy, nutty, alpine, ish. That would be a good vibe.
- [53:49]
D
Yeah, that definitely is a crowd pleaser. But I mean, there's lots, I mean, you can sort of say, you know, Gouda, but like I said, there's a lot of industrial Gouda, which is really young and boring, or you can go for, you know, there are also smaller producers, you know, maybe use it on a farm, using raw milk. Making cheese in a more traditional way, aging it a bit longer. And those are the cheeses you want, really, because they're the ones that have more complexity and flavor. Same with Cheddar. You know, there's lots of terrible cheddar out there, but there's, you know, a really good farmhouse cloth bound cheddar is a beautiful thing and very different to the sort of block vacuum packed stuff you get in supermarkets. So, yeah, hopefully that helps.
- [54:35]
B
Yeah, I think it will. Thinking then about the future kind of more immediately for the both of you. Obviously the book is out in the world. That's off your desk. You are not on the super jury panel going forward. So do either of you have anything you are working on at the moment or in the future that you want to give us a sneak unique preview of? Before I let you go, Gopad, tell.
- [54:55]
C
Us what you're working on at. Poor book.
- [54:59]
D
No, no, no book this year. Thank God for that. No. So I have got quite a few plans actually, so I'M doing a lot of. I do a lot of teaching. I teach something called the Academy of Cheese and I am very excited, actually. I'm going to be coming to the US and Canada and teaching the Academy of Cheese Level 1 course in April in Toronto and New York, which is very exciting for me to go over there and share some cheese knowledge. I'm also really looking forward to a trip to Burgundy to explore French cheese a bit later on in the year and also to island as well in a few months, which is one of my favorite places for cheese and a great place just to go and visit anyway. So, yes, some good cheese sort of trips lined up, but yeah, teaching in Canada and America feels. Feels exciting to me.
- [56:04]
C
I actually have been commissioned a very interesting project that, that is going to take a couple of months. There's a big cheese book, very famous, called Cheese and Microbes. This is the microbiologist who have been researching a lot about cheese. They're coming up with the second edition. This is a very academic book and in the first edition there was no inclusion of cheeses from basically anywhere south of the Rio Grande. So nothing about Mexico, nothing about Latin America, nothing about Brazil. And so I am coordinating a group of researchers from Latin America to write a little bit about the microbiology aspects of their cheese cultures. And then I'm going to be doing summary of what the culture is and then how microbiology actually also impacts the flavor of cheeses of that region. So it's a very different, interesting project. Very different in the sense of this is very technical microbiology, as opposed to the writing about cheese notes, which was really fun as well, but very different.
- [57:25]
B
Well, it sounds like you're both going to be keeping very busy and of course, while you are off doing those range of projects, really, listeners can read the book we've been discussing titled One Cheese to Rule Them All In Search of the World's 100 Best Cheeses, published by Murdoch Books in 2025. Patrick and Carlos, thank you both so much for joining me on the podcast.
- [57:44]
D
Thank you for having us.
- [57:45]
C
Thank you so.
- [57:58]
D
Much.