MEAL TICKET. Cheese spread

Every day my bus home winds its way up the Right Bank, and as it lurches up the slope of the Montmartre hill, it stops to catch its breath right next to La Ferme Saint Hubert, a bright-lit art deco-fronted cheese shop on the rue de Rochechouart. The windows and the glass case of the 30-year-old cheesemonger, run by Henri and Paulette Voy, are full of wheels and blocks and buttresses of cheese, and the shop is always bustling. I’ve never been inside, but the other day I decided, on impulse, to jump off the bus and go in. Some friends who were coming over for drinks seemed the perfect excuse to spend the rent money on cheese.

The French eat over 24 kilos of cheese per person per year, and they do not take it lightly. Cheese has moulded the national identity and is a source of national pride. “Cheese is very good for the health,” read an example sentence in one of my French-language textbooks, a nutritional rule valid only within the borders of la France. When the European Commission proposed restrictions on bacteria levels in cheese in 1992, the French rose up in protest. And it’s rumoured that the French diplomat the Prince of Talleyrand interrupted the Congress of Vienna in 1815, for an international cheese-off. The various representatives produced the pride of their nations (stilton for England, stracchino for Italy), but the brie de meaux carried the day and was declared the roi des fromages : the king of cheeses. (The last king, Louis XVI, had been a fan of brie himself.)

But there are many other contenders for the throne, and buying cheese in France can become a bewildering, panic-attack-inducing thing. Should one choose the morbier, a semi-soft cheese with a layer of ash in the middle, the smell-it-a-mile-away red maroilles , or the Mont d’Or , a Franche-Comté speciality that is so oozy that it has to be corralled in a ring of spruce wood and then a box, and is best baked whole in the oven? Or give up and buy a box of Laughing Cow wedges?

There are more than 400 French cheese varieties, mostly unpasteurised. Three major kinds (cow, sheep and goat milk) are usually divided into eight ‘families’: fromages frais or fresh yoghurt-like cheeses; soft cheeses with a natural, pale rind like brie and camembert); soft cheeses with a washed rind like reblochon or époisses ; pressed cheeses like cantal or tomme de Savoie; pressed and cooked cheeses like emmental or gruyère, often used for cooking; goat cheeses; blue cheeses like the bleu d’Auvergne and Roquefort; and processed cheeses that are a mix of other cheeses blended together, often flavoured with herbs or garlic, like Boursin.

Each cheese has a specific season in which it is at its whiffy acme: spring is best for goat cheeses and soft-mould rinds like brie and coulommiers . February, for instance, is the ideal time for Beaufort, Comté, Salers, époisses , and Vacherin Mont d’Or.

The French government, which is just as interested in cheese as Talleyrand, helpfully lists the best times of the year for different cheeses on the website of itsagriculture ministry, and offers a guide to composing a platter with examples of government-approved groupings (Pélardon goat cheese from Languedoc with Normandy mould rind Brillat-Savarin, and Alsatian washed-rind Munster).

Although industrial products sold in supermarkets make up the large majority of the cheese eaten in France, neighbourhood cheesemongers do brisk business too. Many Paris fromagers are famous for a specific style of cheese: Laurent Dubois for Comté or the legendary camembert stuffed with Calvados-soaked apples, Barthelemy for perfectly reeking Roquefort, and Marie-Anne Cantin for goat-milk cheeses.

At a cheesemonger, trust the fromager: Tell her or him what types of cheese you want and they will recommend something, and if you’re lucky, offer a taste. Contrary to what travel blogs might suggest, don’t expect to be showered with free samples. You’ll probably have more luck with tasting at street markets — many fromagers set out a little plate of small cubes as advertisement.

The owner of La Ferme Saint Hubert is from Poitou, a region known for goat cheeses, so the shop is known for its fromages de chevres, though they do have over a hundred other kinds. The Fromager-Affineur sign signals that they buy cheese from the farmers and age it in the cellars until perfectly ripe. Saint Hubert also sells a variety of jams, cured meats, oils, flavoured butters, and cheeses flavoured with herbs or truffles.

The saleswoman recommended the aged chèvre charolais , calling it the “king of goat cheeses”: a small, tubby barrel-shaped goat cheese with a grey-speckled crust (the speckles are penicillin). Traditionally, a cheese platter should contain a hard, a soft, and a blue cheese, so I asked for a strong sheep-milk Roquefort, the iconic blue-veined cheese that, when at its best, smells like socks, and a wedge of the golden, nutty Alpine Beaufort. Then I couldn’t resist adding the peculiar cone-shaped buttermilk-based boulette d’Avesnes from the north of France. “The boulette is flavoured with parsley, pepper, tarragon, and cloves, bathed in beer and then rolled in paprika,” explained the saleswoman.

Carrying a rather pungent parcel wrapped in waxed paper, I got back on the bus. “It’s very nice, isn’t it,” said the elderly woman next to me, nodding benignly at the shop. “And of course, cheese is very good for the health.”