“I never serve camembert”, declares Jeremy Evrard, officially the restaurant manager of Caprice at the Four Seasons, but in reality the cheese expert, sommelier and passionate educator of the French restaurant’s justly famous cheese collection. The reason is simple: Evrard has a passion for artisanal cheeses made exclusively from unpasteurised milk (lait cru), especially farmhouse cheeses.

While the terms artisanal and farmhouse (or fermier in French) cheeses are often used interchangeably, their strict definitions, especially in France, do differ: whereas artisanal can refer to any cheese made by a small producer using either milk from their own farm or purchased from local farms, fermier cheeses means that the cheese must be produced on the same farm that the milk is produced. The difference between the two are relatively slight, whereas there is an entire ocean of difference between industrial cheeses and fermier or artisanal ones. Cheese made by industrial production is a mass-market cheese, made in huge batches, using milk souced from all over France, with no attention paid to terroir or seasonality.

For Evrard (pictured above), the main difference between industrial cheeses and artisanal or farmhouse cheeses is consistency. Industrial cheese will always taste the same, regardless of seasonality. And while consistency in most other areas of the kitchen is regarded as sacrosanct, it is not so in the cheese cellar. “I like that when I buy artisanal cheese, they can taste different from one week to the next. It’s natural, as cheese is a living thing”, hence his distaste for camembert. While camembert used to be a cheese made from unpasteurised milk by small farms in Normandy, in recent decades, pretty much all camembert is made from industrial producers using safe, pasteurised milk, which is why all the camembert we buy from shops nowadays taste standardised and bland.

The debate between unpasteurised milk versus pasteurised milk has a lot to do with this homogenisation of flavour: unpasteurised milk has a bad reputation, as it has been linked to outbreaks of listeria and other deadly pathogens. Health officials the world over, even in Europe, have advocated that consumers therefore only buy pasteurised milk, including cheeses made from pasteurised milk. However, as the milk becomes pasteurised, what it may gain in safety, it rapidly loses in flavour.

Recently, we paid a visit to Caprice’s chef’s table, which also doubles as the cheese room. With a tightly packed cheese cellar at the back storing Evrard’s weekly deliveries (every Thursday, for those who want to sample the absolute freshest cheeses), the cheese room is a mecca for cheese lovers. At turns professorial and gregarious, Evrard combines passion and knowledge, as well a natural warmth to make any experience at the cheese room feel like dining at a friend’s (slightly stinky) living room. We had asked for an introductory platter of four to five cheeses, naturally the generous Evrard presents us with ten of his favourites, plus about a dozen wines to pair with them. His natural preference is for cheeses made from goat’s milk, and usually about three-quarters of Caprice’s cheese plates served to guests will consist of goat’s milk cheeses.

However, one of the first pairings he suggests is made from cow’s milk, a triple cream Brillat Savarin from the north of Burgundy. “For the last ten years, it was very rare to see this cheese on a good cheese list, the reason being it was mostly industrially produced”, explains Evrard. “It has just made a return as I have found a few very traditional farmers who are producing this cheese in the ancient method”. Like all the cheeses Evrard serves, it is made from unpasteurised milk, and is an ideal cheese to start off with. Its texture is as creamy as ice cream and instantly melts in the mouth. Its flavour is appropriately mild yet anything but bland. To pair with it, “you can’t have anything too complex, so a blanc de blanc champagne made from pure chardonnay is a classic marriage”. Evrard suggested pairing is a grand cru champagne from Diebolt Vallois Blanc de Blanc Prestige.

When pairing cheese with wines, Evrard advises that the maturity of the cheese is of paramount importance. Cheese made from goat’s milk are usually served younger and fresher, therefore white wines are usually recommended. To demonstrate, Evrard serves us his favourite goat’s cheese, paired with a chenin blanc from his home region of Loire Valley. The galet de Bigorre is made by a Belgian couple, who are so respectful of seasonality that no cheese is made during the goats’ reproduction period. The cheese is rich for a goat’s cheese, and is excellent with the 2009 chenin blanc from Anjou Coteau des Treilles Dom Pithon Paille, which is full of citrus and character.

Moving onto cow’s milk, we are served our most unexpected pairing of the day: a 24-month mimolette extra vieille from Lille, with Hoegaarden. While this was surprising to us, Evrard insists that it is the most common pairing in the north of France. The nutty flavours of the mimolette are ideally suited to the cereal flavours of the white beer. As the cheese ages, it gains slight grains of salt crystal, which can dehydrate the mouth and palate. Drinking wines with mimolette can exacerbate this dryness, while the frothy white beer is the perfect foil to it.

Another excellent cow’s milk we tried is the Saint-Félicien, from the Rhône-Alpes region of France. It is similar to the smaller Saint-Marcellin, another soft cow’s milk cheese that is a favourite in Lyon, but it is less aggressive in flavour. Those who love runny cheeses will adore it, as it is extremely creamy, oozing its milky texture all over the plate. It is a subtle cheese, best paired with a lighter red wine such as the 2007 pinot noir from Gevrey Chambertin, Dom de la Vougerale (pictured above, to the left).

Finally, we move onto the much-anticipated blue cheeses: a Roquefort “le vieux berger”(sheep’s milk) and a fourme d’ambert (cow’s milk). The Roquefort is made from a producer named Yves Combes, who has less than 20 employees who creates Roquefort using the ancient method. “What I love about this Roquefort,” says Evrard, “ is that it changes in front of your eyes. When you first cut it, it’s green like olive oil. Only when you let it sit out does the mould slowly turn to blue.” Unlike many less superior Roquefort, this creamy blue cheese is neither metallic or too strong. It pairs perfectly with a 2005 sweet Banyuls from Quintessences (pictured below), with its strong taste of Grenache.

Long a lover of Roquefort, we were taken aback by just how much we loved, and perhaps even preferred, the fourme d’ambert. As it is made from cow’s milk, the fourme d’ambert is less sharp and more rounded than the Roquefort and in general feels much, much richer. Again, Evrard pairs it with a sweet wine, this time with a late harvest 2007 chenin blanc from Coteaux du Layon les Rouannieres Dom Papin and it is possibly the most ideal and decadent pairing to end on.

The Cheese Room at Caprice is open for private parties: with a minimum spending of HK$10,000, it can seat two to eight guests.