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There's an ongoing dispute in our house and it resolves around cheese. More precisely, we can't agree at what point we should be eating it. Hubbie, who has a personal preference to finish his meal on a savoury note, likes it right at the very end. I, on the other hand, hanker to soak up my main course wine with a chunk of cheese before launching into a decadent sweet finale.

It's all horses for courses really, but I have to point out the not insignificant advantages of serving cheese before pudding.

Firstly, too many people see cheese as an indulgent extra and so best avoided. Putting it first means that fat comes before sugar and that can't be a bad thing. Secondly, it's an opportunity to show just how good a sublime wine and cheese combination can be.

Cheese boards' are expensive and complex. If you insist on including one hard; one soft; one blue; one goat; one cow that doesn't come cheap does it? Secondly, it'll be an impossibility to find a wine that will complement all the cheeses and vice versa.

Here, then, is my advice.

Decide on the main course and the wine to go with it and then select one utterly gorgeous slab of the tastiest cheese you can find that will best match the wine you've picked out. Having done that, all you need to worry about is identifying which wines work best with which cheeses.

Like all food and wine matching there is one great rule that you shouldn't forget: the weightier - that's to say flavoursome - the wine, the gutsier the cheese you'll need.

There are some combinations that are indisputably delicious - bordering on the hedonistic! A fine sweet wine with vibrant acidity and a generous palate remains one of the best choices to drink alongside salty, blue Roquefort. The wine serves to mellow out the gustiness of the blue and if the wine is well chosen, it will have sufficient intensity to take on the cheese's flavour.

A fresh goats cheese with a crisp sauvignon blanc (be it Sancerre, Côtes de Gascogne or even New World) is another match made in foodie heaven. It's refreshing and invigorating and a great way to gear up the taste buds for a bit of pudding.

The deliciously tangy, sheep's milk manchego from La Mancha in Spain, is one of my all-time favourites. It's semi-hard, tangy and not overly powerful. It's a blinder of a cheese to serve with a glass of red tempranillo. Go the whole hog and add a serving of membrillo (quince) jam to spread on the cheese and you can always give up on pudding altogether!

It would be grossly incompetent on my part not to give the mighty British cheddar a mention too. Our love affair with the wines of Bordeaux may occasionally be a tad rocky but I defy anyone to tuck into fine cheddar with a glass of quality St. Emilion and not feel as though they were eating the meal of kings.

These are some of the best-known cheese and wine combinations around, but would you seriously consider drinking either a white - or even rosé - with your cheese?

Trami d'Alsace is a soft washed-rind cheese, made in much the same way as the better known Munster. What sets it apart though is that it is washed in the local gewûrtztraminer wine which ultimately makes the optimum drinking partner. Rosé fans don't despair. Banon - made from goats milk - hails from northern Provence and cries out for the pink stuff.

The Great British Cheese Festival is on this weekend (29-30th September) at Millets Farm Centre, near Abingdon and is an opportunity to taste over 400 home-grown cheeses in a fun, relaxed atmosphere. Visit www.thecheeseweb.com for more information.

In the meantime, I think I've resolved the family debate. We'll just not bother with any other courses at all. I can think of worse things than a meal of cheese and wine alone!

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11:14am Thursday 27th September 2007

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