Cheesemaker teaches lactose-ignorant the wheys and curds of her profession

Is cheese the new wine? Fromage expert Lucy Watson thinks so. The cheese whizz from London's Neal's Yard Dairy is now at gourmet food store Classified (next to the Press Room) in Central, offering cheese appreciation classes and advice to brie-ginners who may not know jack about Gouda.

'To me, cheese is a special product,' the 26-year-old (pictured) said. 'To make the traditional small-production, hand-made cheese, people have to put in so much time, energy, love, blood, sweat and tears. Cheesemakers get up at 4am herding their cows, milking them and getting the cheese out to the market by 10am.'

For Watson, teaching lactose-ignorant Asians about the wheys and curds of it all has been an interesting experience itself, as her first lesson last Thursday showed. 'Some have been loyal fans of cheese for 20 years and some didn't have much understanding of what cheese was really about. The strangest question of the night was: 'What animal can you make cheese from?' In theory, you can make cheese with any mammal's milk, but it went in a direction that we didn't really want to go.' The query concerned whether one can make swine cheese. 'Pigs are quite difficult to milk. It was definitely the weirdest part of the talk.'

For more info on Watson's cheese talks, call 25253444.