You don’t have to stick to stilton this year – there are plenty of other choices for your festive cheeseboard

The time for stilton, traditionalists insist, is just after Christmas lunch when you are already ridiculously replete. But because you’re wallowing in that supremely contented post-Christmas feast feeling you can still manage a hunk or two of this finest of cheeses, especially when partnered with an extraordinarily fine vintage port.

At its best stilton is impossible to beat: rich and tangy, velvety, close-textured with a pale ivory hue melding into amber at the edges and marbled with a greenish-blue vein and a crusty rind with white powdery patches. But buyers beware. Such quality cheese is rarely squashed into those tempting stilton jars peddled almost everywhere at this time of year.

Colsten Bassett, a small farmers’ co-operative dairy who arguably make the finest stilton in the country – of great creaminess and fruity mellowness – advise against buying even a small truckle which will dry out too quickly and not have such well-developed flavour. They suggest buying a piece off a large stilton or their so-called baby, a whopping six-pounder.

Visually, the best stilton has evenly distributed veins with a marked contrast between the paste and veins. Despite the pretensions of many a grand restaurant dining room, scooping out of the middle of a stilton will only dry it out. It is wiser to cut it crosswise with a knife or wire and simply work through the cheese.

Next page: other Christmas cheeses

Other Christmas cheeses
Stilton is not the only fine British cheese fit for Christmas feasting. There are plenty of on-farm inspiring cheeses such as the delectably creamy mould-ripened Camembert-like Bonchester made in the Borders, best served well matured, or the equally traditional tangy, gutsy unpasteurised Montgomery or Keen’s Cheddar.

Cheesemaker Robin Congdon makes incredibly good alternative French-style blue cheeses: crumbly, creamy Beenleigh Blue with a salty tang, Devon Blue with a hint of lemon honey, and creamy white Harbourne, strong, but milky sweet. He sells a special Christmas pack of all three blues together with his goat’s milk Ticklemore.

The French invariably serve Vacherin at Christmas – it’s a sublime seasonal cheese of great resonance traditionally made only between October and March high in the Franche-Comté. It gets its unique aroma from the spruce bark used to mature it. The curds are ringed with the bark which becomes attached to the outside of the cheese. Its aroma gradually penetrates the cheese which becomes meltingly soft as it matures. Once fully mature, the cheese is packed in a pine box. Serve it au natural - remove the wrinkled pinkish gold crust and spoon out the soft inside - or, as Patricia Michelson of London cheeseshop La Fromagerie, suggests, wrap the Vacherin, still in its box, in foil and bake for 15 minutes in a medium oven for an quick seasonal fondue supper. Serve with crusty bread, small boiled potatoes, dry-cured ham and cornichons (gherkins) to dip.

Francophiles perferring a cheese with more bite adore aromatic Beaufort, with its particularly rich fruity aroma and smooth buttery texture - ‘the prince of gruyères’, according to bon viveur Brillat-Saverin. The very best is Beaufort Haute-Montagne, a description legally restricted to cheeses made with summer milk from the herb-rich high mountain pastures of the Savoie and in season only from December to late Spring. Blue cheese afficionados favour the particularly delicate, green-veined ewe’s milk Roqueforts such as Carles – strong, crumbly and with plenty of powerful flavour.

Exceptionally good aged Parmigiano Reggiano (giovane is young, matured for a year, vecchio, old, is two years or more, extra mature stravecchio is three years, stravecchione extra mature after four years) with its lovely straw-yellow colour, crumbly texture and fruity aroma has been the definitive choice for Italian festive meals over the past seven centuries. It is judged to be the cheese richest in protein, lowest in fat and cholesterol and easily digestible because of its long maturation. At its peak of perfection parmigiano is con gocciola which means that when the cheese is split open one can see tiny tears of moisture glistening on the surface. A quality parmesan is best served with a good asti spumante. London restaurauteurs Antonio and Pruscilla Carluccio invariably serve small mountain sheep’s and cow’s cheeses with shards of truffle at Christmas.

Stockists
Colston Bassett; tel: 01949 81322
Carluccio’s, new alimentari/caffe, Lower Ground Floor, Fenwick, New Bond St W1; tel: 020 7629 0699, mail order: 020 7580 2552
La Fromagerie, Highbury Park, London N5; tel: 020 7359 7440
Jeroboams, for Vacherin, tel: 020 7727 9359 (mail order)