The Cheese Lover's Companion: The Ultimate A-To-Z Cheese Guide with More Than 1,000 Listings for Cheeses & Cheese-Related Terms

Love this reference book that is informative and concise. Easy to reference and well indexed.

The Book is exactly what I expected it to be. Specific information about cheese's of the world and a description of how they're made, what they taste like, and what foods they best accompany. I now bring it with me to cheese stores so that if I see something I think I would like, I look it up and make the decision as to whether I buy it or not.

In an earlier incarnation, I've endeavored to collect compendia of everything, and read them all, such that I could know all there is to know, and have, if not at tip of tongue, then, tip of finger, the answer, and more's the better to look, as there may be one missed or forgotten morsel of fact that I can sop up. But lately I've discovered a loss of this generalized appetite -- or some kind of waning, perhaps it is as a barley field that only grows waist-high in one season, and stops, and does not get ever taller each year as the oak; this knowledge has a secondary purpose. The season is done. The tallness of barley counts for nothing but straw, more important are the kernels in the staff. So I was researching "cheese," because I want to do a project of a limited scope having to do with cheese. And I found this book, "The Cheese Lover's Companion: The ultimate A - to- Z cheese Guide," Sharon Tyler Herbst and Ron Herbst, William Morrow, 2007. These two wrote a lot of food books together; I did not know that before. I thought I had sworn off of this stuff! Okay, I am not going to sit here and read a cheese dictionary when I can instead go swimming in a heated pool in a glass room, when there's snow on the ground ... but this has got THE rules for a cheese-tasting party (if you've been to an especially sublime one, or a bad one, you know ...), cheese-wine pairings, cheese-beer pairings ... and then your knowledge of cheese can be sated for any one reading by the cheese descriptions. I remember going to a beer-tasting in 1993 at the Museum at the University of Pennsylvania. Micheal Jackson, the scotch connoisseur, was leading the tasting. The head of Anchor-Steen (Beer, SF) presented a beer named Ninkasa, named after the Sumerian goddess of beers. The recipe for the beer was derived from a translation of a Sumerian poem ... I have hardcopy around here somewhere, but you can probably google it. An anthropologist/archeologist gave a lecture on the tandem developments of the culturing of BEER and BREAD, both derived from grains and yeast. Which came first? What kinds of happy accidents happened? Which one were they trying for when they discovered the other? Man! Early man were some hungry, thirsty, curious, and relentlessly persistent people! We were shown pottery in which divots were made in the interior surfaces, such to catch and keep the right yeasts ... and the experts there that night were positing that early man wanted BEER, and BREAD was the baked muck left-over; a lot like trying to find a use for coffee-grounds. Oh, I was talking about this cheese book. Well, cheese culture is another wonder of human artifice ... an edible wonder. This is the first paragraph of the book: *** "Cheese is a mysterious, passion-inspiring, mind-boggling force of nature that leaves in its wake a sensual afterglow and longings for more. Arguably the world's most popular food, cheese nourishes the body, energizes the spirit, and satisfies hunger on all levels.

This book is comprehensive and easy to use and should be indispensable for cheese lovers. It is full of information, and the "dictionary" structure means that the user doesn't need to know the answer before starting the search. The writing is crisp and informative, and the price is great. This book belongs, with Food Lover's Companion, on the shelf in the kitchen for the cookbooks and reference books that actually and repeatedly get used.

I don't understand the negativity. The other review reads more like something you'd hear from a jealous competing writer or publisher rather than a reader--which makes me very suspicious of his/her motives. I, on the other hand, found The Cheese Lover's Companion to be factual, thorough, and written in a very engaging manner. I know cheese (but am always eager to learn more), and I feel the level of detail in this book is spot-on (and the production quality is fine). If you love cheese, I think you would find this title an indispensable part of your library. Highly recommended!