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To anyone trying to navigate the basics of cheese beyond cheddar, Charles de Gaulle’s much-repeated (and mangled) quote, “How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?” resonates mightily.

Only 246?

Cheese is much like wine in its dizzying array of flavors, techniques, and places of origin. It is made all over the world—France has its Brie, India its paneer, and the Caucasus region its kefir—and the only common denominator is milk. Whether taken from a sheep, cow, goat, water buffalo, or even yak (for certain East Asian cheeses), the milk is curdled, and the whey drained. What happens next depends on the type of cheese—and only adds to the long list of culinary jargon. Bloomy rinded? Cave aged? Raw milk?

If it all leaves you tongue-tied, take heart. Our guide will have you engaging in cheesy cocktail banter in no time.

Does Age Matter? Though it might sound good, as with wine, to say a cheese has been aged, older is not necessarily better. Some cheeses are meant to be eaten young, while others taste better when they’ve been sitting around a cave for a while, developing more intense flavors. Fresh cheeses—mozzarella, ricotta, chèvre, cream, or cottage—are pale, mild, and moist, and have a short shelf life. Soft cheeses such as Brie and Camembert are aged normally about one month; they develop their characteristic soft, white, moldy outsides and can fall anywhere along the flavor spectrum from mild to connoisseur-grade pungent. Some cheeses, like certain Parmesans and cheddars, spend years ripening in storerooms or caves, watched carefully by specialists known as affineurs.

Mind the Rind. Whether to eat the outside is a matter of personal taste. Cheese rinds can range from pale and practically nonexistent to tough and waxy. The white kinds, like those on Brie and Camembert, are created when a mold is encouraged to grow on the exterior of the young cheese, lending it flavor. Hard-cheese rinds, as on Gruyère, are edible but can become considerably stronger with age. Waxy rinds, such as those on fontina and Edam, preserve the cheese’s moisture and simply don’t taste good. And in some cases, the rind is the best part—if the cheese has received a wine coating (Epoisses get “washed” in brandy while aging), or been coated with herbs such as rosemary, for example.

The Raw Row. Cheese made with unpasteurized milk is thought to be tastier, more complex, and flat-out natural. It’s common in Europe and favored by connoisseurs. But the Food and Drug Administration and various members (mostly American) of the medical community maintain that the milk that goes into cheese should be pasteurized in order to eliminate bacteria (Listeria, salmonella, and E. coli). The compromise: Raw-milk cheeses must be aged 60 days before being sold, purchased, or imported into the U.S. But some specialty cheese shops and mail-order operations sell raw-milk cheeses they’ve “accidentally” imported along with the less controversial stuff. Don’t feel like sneaking around? Consider it a good excuse to buy a plane ticket to France.

Domestic or Imported? “Almost as a rule, imported cheese used to be better cheese—it’s not the case anymore,” says Mitchell Davis, vice president and director of communications at the James Beard Foundation in New York. Domestic producers are finally making something other than big, orange blocks of cheddar. Small American farms, aided by their ability to regulate their milk and sell one-herd productions (which better maintain a cheese’s essence, since everything comes from the same cows, being fed the same nutrients), are now producing consistently flavorful, unusual artisanal cheeses. Because production is small-scale, the final product is expensive—over $30 a pound for cheeses from some farms.

Your Serve. For a winning cheese plate, go one of two ways. Choose different types—a soft Brie, a salty Stilton, and a tangy cheddar, for example—and compare textures and flavors. Or, as some experts do, select similar kinds with different origins: three sheep’s milk cheeses, say, one each from France, Sardinia, and Tuscany. To best experience flavor, eat cheese at room temperature. If serving at home, place the cheese, minus wrapping, on a platter and cover with a clean dish towel to prevent drying. Make sure each cheese has its own knife, so as not to muddle the flavors, and avoid cutting them up in advance, as that hastens the drying process. Fresh fruits such as apples and pears make good accompaniments to cheese plates, as do dried apricots or juicy olives. Skip grapefruits, oranges, and other citrus fruits—their high acid content doesn’t mix well with the cheeses’ fatty acids.