food; Up in smoke

Thirty smoked cheeses were lined up before us on a trestle table. They ranged from threatening specimens that looked as though they had spent the past six months up a chimney, to surreal blocks coated in green wax. My tasting partner, Win Merrells, from Marks & Spencer, leaned over, "Now listen to your mother. Spit." It is a habit more usually associated with wine tasting, but in this case a sensible precaution. Smoked cheeses were just one of the categories at the recent British Cheese Awards, and there seemed to be little dispute that we had drawn the short straw .

I started tasting with an open mind but reservations soon began to creep in. The grim reputation of smoked cheeses is partly deserved: at the lower end of the scale, processed cheeses are flavoured with liquid smoke. Quite how you manufacture liquid smoke hardly bears thinking about. Wash out an ashtray or scrub down the barbecue? When a smoked cheese is bad, it is very, very bad. When it is good, though, it is thanks to the cheesemaker's judgement in balancing the sweet-sourness of the cheese with the smokey flavour.

First off you have to produce a good cheese. Smoking mediocre cheese won't "bring anything to the party" says Mrs Merrells. You also have to match the right cheese with the right smoke, and balance the density of each. The smoking needs to be done very gently to avoid the cheese drying out, and it has to be done in the cold. After smoking, the cosmetic finish is a deep brown glaze, not unlike that on reproduction furniture. With the artificially flavoured cheeses, another filthy habit is the painting on of a brown slime to achieve this look.

Some cheeses are best smoked young to allow the smoke to penetrate: a mature cheese may be too compact. John and Patrice Savage, who make a smoked teifi on Glynhynod Farm, Llandysul in Wales which won a bronze medal, believe that the quality of the hardwood used is all-important: most cheeses are smoked over oak but there is nothing to stop a cheesemaker from using hickory, pine or some other wood.

As we tasted our way through the entries at the awards, it immediately became apparent that there were certain no-nos: goats' milk cheeses were bad news, and the effect of smoke on a blue cheese made it abominably bitter. Cheddar on the other hand is made for the job, with a sweetness that balances the smoke, and a touch of acidity. And it was the youngish Cheddar that worked best, the really tangy farmhouse cheese was too characterful.

There were two gold medal winners. Sturminster Farm's oak-smoked Cheddar, available from Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury's, Safeway and Waitrose, achieves perfect balance and harmony. The second gold medal went to Northumberland smoked, a small-scale, handmade, washed-curd cheese with a texture like a gouda. It was smooth and lingering and the smokiness rounded off to a rather glorious finish without protruding in any way.

Great British cheeses aside, some of you may be familiar with the superlative ewe's milk Idiazabal from the Basque region of Spain: originally the smoking was caused by the absence of chimneys in the shepherds' huts, though today the cheese is smoked at the end of ripening over beech, hawthorn, cherry or birch wood. It is superbly nutty, with a close, firm texture; creamier than a pecorino but not unlike it.

For the radical purist, like Randolph Hodgson of Neal's Yard Dairy in Covent Garden, smoking cheese is criminal. "If you have a cheese with great flavour then smoking will mask it." This view he fortifies by adding "smoking is about preserving food, so why try to preserve an already preserved food?" However, if you can shop around the specialised cheese shops and good cheese counters (Neal's Yard excepted), there are some extremely good smoked cheeses on the market, and you can always ask to taste. But it is an acquired taste