Creating the Perfect Cheese Platter

The perfect cheese plate should include a mix of fresh, aged, soft and hard cheeses, arranged in the order in which they should be tasted: from the lightest and freshest to the ripest and most intense.

Following are eight different styles of cheese to select from. You do not need to put all eight styles on your cheese platter but give your guests a variety of three to five cheeses. Add some dried/fresh fruit, fig or apricot jam, crusty bread and roasted nuts to complete your platter.

Fresh Cheeses
Fresh cheeses are ready to eat as soon as they are made—no aging required. They generally have the mild, minerally flavors of their primary ingredients: milk and salt.

Semi-soft Cheeses
Mild semisoft cheeses are most often aged from a few days to a few months. They melt beautifully under the slightest heat.

Soft-ripened Cheeses
Distinguished by their white "bloomy" rinds and creamy interiors, soft-ripened cheeses get softer instead of harder as they age. The best-known are Brie and Camembert

Surface-ripened Cheeses
Surface-ripened cheeses are sometimes firm and sometimes molten, but they all have similarly wrinkly rinds and intensely flavored interiors.

Semihard Cheeses
A broad category ranging from cheddar to Gouda, semihard cheeses can be aged anywhere from a few months to a few years, and sometimes longer.

Hard Cheeses
Hard cheeses like Parmigiano-Reggiano are defined by their firm, granular texture and salty-sharp taste

Blue Cheeses
Blue cheeses get their color from rich veins of mold and range in texture from creamy to creamy-crumbly to hard.

Washed-rind Cheeses
These cheeses get their characteristic orange-pink rinds from being "washed" (rubbed, really) with a solution of salt water and beneficial bacteria. Often described as stinky (in a good way), washed-rind cheeses can smell stronger than they taste.

Cheese-plate pointers
• Serve one to two ounces of cheese per person.
• Include a mix of fresh, aged, soft and hard cheeses.
• Arrange—and sample—the cheeses starting with the freshest and lightest, ending with the ripest and most intense.