Daniel, the chef, presented the cheeses each day. He described each, what region of France it came from, whether it came from the milk of a vache (cow) or chèvre (goat), a little bit about it, and how to cut it. He also suggested an order in which to try them, generally from the mildest to the strongest. With five cheeses at each of six dinners, we sampled thirty cheeses during the week.

You may recall the famous quote from Charles de Gaulle, "How can anyone govern a nation that has 246 different kinds of cheese?" One web site says that the total is now 400 varieties of cheese, so we only got to try 7.5 percent of the cheeses of France. The French eat more cheese than any other nation in the world, an amazing total of 45 lbs. per person per year!