If you’ve been reading your way around our website recently, you may have noticed a Frenchman called Pierre popping up occasionally.

I should probably explain.

Pierre isn’t real.

At least, our Pierre isn’t real. I’m sure there are plenty of perfectly lovely French cheesemakers called Pierre, and I’d like to apologise to all of them in advance.

Pierre first appeared while I was rewriting the Cheese Etc website and talking about the way we sometimes romanticise artisan cheese. You know the sort of thing:

Raw milk. Ancient recipe. Natural cave. Recipe handed down through fourteen generations.

And before I knew it, Pierre appeared.

In my head, Pierre has been making raw-milk cheese in a cave somewhere in rural France since 1437. His family have been making the same cheese for considerably longer, naturally, and they have absolutely no intention of changing anything.

Pierre does not approve of flavoured cheese.

Pierre is suspicious of wax.

Pierre thinks pasteurisation was the beginning of the end.

He isn’t entirely convinced cheese should be sold on the internet.

And I’ve recently discovered that Pierre’s fundamental objection to British cheese isn’t that we’re doing it incorrectly.

It’s that the British are making cheese at all.

Unfortunately for Pierre, cheese moved on

And that’s really why I’ve grown rather fond of him.

I absolutely adore traditional cheese. Give me a clothbound raw-milk Cheddar, a piece of three-year-old Comté or something that’s been quietly maturing in a cave and I’m extremely happy.

But cheese doesn’t have to be centuries old to be good.

Sometimes brilliant cheese comes from somebody taking an old idea and doing something new with it.

Sometimes it has nettles wrapped around it.

Sometimes it’s smoked.

Sometimes it’s washed in wine.

Sometimes it has cranberries in it.

And, whether Pierre likes it or not, sometimes it is made in Britain.

I’ve even established that sometimes you simply want cheese with apricots in it.

So who is Pierre?

Pierre is my imaginary guardian of cheese tradition.

He’ll probably appear from time to time around the website whenever I encounter a cheese that might cause him to raise a disapproving French eyebrow.

If you spot his name, don’t worry. You haven’t missed an important cheesemaker.

He’s just sitting in his cave.

Judging us.

And if anyone happens to be passing rural France, please don’t tell him about Wisconsin.