I was talking to a chef from a fancy French restaurant at this weekend's video shoot, and he mentioned that certain expensive cheeses only actually taste good when paired with the right wine. As someone who sometimes enjoys cheese that most people can't stand (nothing terribly fancy, I'm talking stuff like 5-year cheddar or fleur de maquis), I started to wonder whether the cheese actually tastes good, or if we convince ourselves that it tastes good because we enjoy it for other reasons.

Enjoying a foul-smelling cheese, after all, gives you the wonderful feeling that you are far more refined than the average person, yet at the same time far more barbaric. There aren't many other things you can consume to get that wonderfully pretentious feeling - mostly certain kinds of hard liquor. But would the cheese be actually enjoyable without that feeling?

Hardly one of life's most pressing mysteries, but I believe I have the answer. Whenever I pull an especially smelly cheese from the fridge, my dogs go crazy. Even while it's still wrapped in foil, they are far more interested in it than they would be in any other food - even meat. If the dogs think it's the greatest food in the world, I'll trust their opinion to be objective and accurate. Dogs aren't capable of being pretentious.