Have you noticed how many cheese obsessives there are around these days? They were especially active over Christmas. Perhaps you proudly wheeled out your truckle of stilton, only to be told you’d bought the wrong sort. (“Darling, don’t you know? It has be Stichelton this year. The one made from unpasteurised milk.”)

Or perhaps you did as I did, and offered round that wonderful Welsh cheddar-style cheese with the black rind, then one absolutely everyone likes because it’s so mouth-meltingly delicious. And got the reply: “Ah, Black Bomber. Mmm, it’s perfectly okay for its kind, a bit like an Aussie shiraz, but it’s just, well it’s not . . .” “Hand-ladled at dawn by rosy-cheeked virgins, rolled in a pungent blend of wind-dried fox and deer poo, marinated for five years in mead made using Alfred the Great’s personal recipe and sold at £500 an eighth,” was what I think my friend was struggling, in her tactful way, to say.

And the problem’s getting worse. Ten years ago, there were 96 cheesemakers in Britain. Now there are 176, producing more than 700 varieties, including 150 types of goat’s cheese and 20 types of buffalo cheese, for the delectation of a growing band of cheese gastro-snobs. The model Helena Christensen embodies the fetish: “Oh, God, last night I tried the most amazing one yet,” she gushes.

“It was soft yet solid; it was dripping off my spoon. And the taste! It was aged in wood. There are times when I’ve bought a whole pound of cheese and walked down the street and eaten it in one go.”

Today, cheese is a huge industry, attracting rock stars such as Blur’s Alex James and former City Good Lifers, who no doubt find the typical 6.30am start to the cheesemaker’s day pleasantly familiar. “We have become gourmandised as a nation,” says James, who, in collaboration with Juliet Harbutt, the British Cheese Awards organiser, has created an extremely desirable variety called Little Wallop. Cheese, he says, is taking the place of wine as a social statement: “I used to be greeted with champagne. Now it’s cheese.”

James, who is experimenting with a new cheese – “one with fire, like a baked Alaska” – says that interest has also increased because “a lot of dairy farmers needed to add value to the milk they were producing, so they turned to cheese”.

“We’ve been lucky with our timing,” agrees Julie Cheyney, a farmer’s wife who set up Hampshire Cheese in 2004 with a former caterer, Stacey Hedges. Two years later, their soft cheese, Tunworth, was named supreme champion at the aforementioned awards. “We set up when farmers’ markets were taking off, and when everyone was starting to ask, ‘Is it seasonal?’, or ‘Is it local?’,” she says.

“People in this country care so much more than they used to about food, and standards have increased enormously.”

In culinary terms, cheese is the new black. “Our customers are choosing cheese instead of dessert,” says Geraldine Leventis, owner of Raoul’s deli, in Maida Vale, west London. Her bestselling line over Christmas was lengths of olive wood, which customers were buying as cheeseboards, along with two or three cheeses, to give as an alternative to hampers.

For James, artisanal cheesemaking has proved a key staging post in his passage from louche bass player to rural squire. “Because of who Alex is, we couldn’t afford to let it be a one-day wonder,” Harbutt says. “And because of who I am, it had to be good, which it is. It’s a goat’s cheese in a vine leaf, washed in Somerset cider brandy – gooey but not too strong, with a slightly aromatic, appley note.” Little Wallop has proved such a success at shops, including Daylesford Organic, James and Harbutt plan to develop three more varieties: a pickled cheese, a hard cow’s milk and a blue cheese called Blue Monday.

Among the likely takers will be the XFM DJ Eddy Temple-Morris, a dedicated gastronome and cheese-lover. “I love going to a sleepy village with an artisanal deli out of Rick Stein’s Food Heroes, and discovering some new cheese that has been dipped in ash, or wrapped in a ridiculous leaf, and that stinks to high heaven,” he says. “There’s a wonderful thing happening to cheese: it’s going back to the old school. We seem to have got over that period where it was just the product of EU directives on pasteurised milk, sitting cold and dead on a slab in Sainsbury’s. I like my cheese to be full of bacteria. I want it to be alive, walking about, with its own pulse.”

Fellow DJ Rob da Bank, a cheese convert, agrees. “I love that whole business in restaurants with the cheese sommelier,” he says. “Once you’ve been to your cheesemonger and had a proper manchego or a cheddar from Mull, your prepackaged supermarket stuff just won’t do the job. But I find it hard to believe I’m saying this. If you’d asked me five years ago what I thought of cheese, I’d have said: ‘I’ll have another pint, thanks, then I’m off to a rave.’ ”

CHEESE: THE PITFALLS

Primula spread/La Vache qui Rit/edam You are either a refined 1970s retro ironist, four years old, or a pleb.

Tunworth/Stichelton/Little Wallop You are a fashion victim who has spent more time than is healthy reading articles about trendy cheese.

Manchego with membrillo (quince paste) You are a touch passé – that combo is so mid1990s – but it is a match made in heaven, so you’re forgiven, as long as your manchego is properly obscure and authentically rustic.

Pecorino See manchego. Nothing wrong with it per se, but British ewe’s-milk cheese – such as Lord of the Hundreds – is where it’s at these days. Torta di dolcelatte The Mateus Rosé of cheeses. You are a gourmet who knows that, for all its commonness, dolcelatte is still gorgeously rich and delicious.

Montgomery’s cheddar You take your style tips from Richard and Judy.

Wensleydale You take your style tips from Wallace and Gromit.

Stinking Bishop See Wensleydale. You like whoopee cushions, exploding toilet seats and wines with names such as Goats Do Roam and Cat’s Pee on a Gooseberry Bush.

Camembert/brie You are old-school. Probably not in a good way.

Buy these cheeses and others from The Fine Cheese Company

THE CHEESE RULES ACCORDING TO JULIET HARBUTT

— Don’t serve waxed cheese. To be credible, it needs a rind

— Don’t serve anything containing fruit or nuts – although chives or sage are forgivable, because they are traditional

— If you serve smoked cheese, be sure it is oak-smoked, not simply painted like the inside of a dirty barbecue with liquid smoke flavouring

— Don’t serve your cheese in miserable little wedges. Better to serve one or two magnificent cheeses in huge chunks than dozens of tiny bits

— Serve the cheese between the main course and pudding, or not at all

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