59 cheeses

Auvergne, France

Volcanic pasture, rye-straw cellars, and a rind that smells of mushrooms.

Nottinghamshire, England

A raw-milk Stilton in all but name — the name is the one thing it cannot have.

Lombardy / Val Taleggio, Italy

A square washed rind from Lombardy that smells far worse than it behaves.

Savoie, France

A low-fat farmhouse leftover that turned out to be delicious.

Bernese Jura, Switzerland

Shaved into rosettes with a hand-cranked blade, because slicing ruins it.

Vaud / Jura, Switzerland

Only made in winter, only sold in a spruce box, only eaten with a spoon.

Thise, Jutland, Denmark

Aged in cellars that take in North Sea air, and it tastes like it.

Burträsk, Västerbotten, Sweden

Sweden’s one great hard cheese, made in a single dairy nobody can replicate.

Somerset, Dorset, Devon & Cornwall, England

The real thing: cloth-bound, cave-aged, and nothing like a plastic block.

North Yorkshire, England

Cistercian in origin, saved from closure in the 1990s by a cartoon.

Burgundy, France

Washed in grape brandy until the rind glows orange and the room objects.