Media Credit: Bryant Haertlein Whole Foods offers a wide selection of cheeses from around the world. Varieties, pictured clockwise from left, include Mt. Tam Triple Cream, La Tur, Port Salut, Langres and Stilen.

Four years ago at Bouchon - Thomas Keller's bistro in Yountville, Calif. - I was dining with my thesis adviser. The meal was ending, and the waiter asked if we would like dessert. I hesitated, not knowing if it was rude to order dessert on my professor's tab, but he encouraged me.

"If you get dessert, I can order cheese," he said.

Cheese for dessert? That was new to me. I ordered the mousse, and my adviser ordered cheese.

"Do you have a cheese with legs?" he asked.

"Legs?" the waiter asked.

"Legs ­- so ripe you have to worry about it getting up and waking away," he replied.

"Uh, the Camembert is pretty stinky," the waiter said.

"Camembert? That is awfully tame. Oh well, bring me the cheese plate," my adviser said.

I decided then and there I would find out what these walking cheeses were all about. Back in Austin, I went to Central Market and found some goat cheese in a foil wrapper. Touching the wrapper caused my fingers to stink for days. The package oozed, and I decided this was the ripe and stinky cheese my adviser had been hoping for at the bistro in Yountville. On the way out of Central Market, I ran into my adviser and showed him my find. He held it to his face and wrinkled his nose at it.

"That should do," he said.

In the last four years, I have started to explore cheese more in-depth. Over the weekend I expanded my knowledge of fromage with the help of cheesemonger Forrest Allen. Allen sells cheese at a natural food store and has been working with cheese for nine years. He suggested that I build up my tasting vocabulary.

"I first developed a vocabulary to accompany my personal sensations when eating," Allen said. "Whatever you are tasting say it, from there you can develop a vocabulary."

My current cheese vocabulary includes creamy, stinky, dirty-socks, velvety and awesome. I put these together into a cheese sentence: This cheese stinks of dirty-sock and has a creamy, velvety texture. It's awesome.

Right now, cheeses with those characteristics are my favorite. But Allen explained that I would be remiss to limit myself to a particular flavor of cheese year round.

Continued...

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