A 20-minute paddle-boat trip along the lake from the Swiss city of
Lucerne will put you in the town of Kriens at the foot of Mount
Pilatus, one of Switzerland’s most-visited mountains. The
steepest rack railway in the world will take you to the top,
which is 7,000 feet above sea level.

Pilatus is a major tourist attraction, but that has not always
been the case. For centuries local residents believed that
Pilatus was inhabited by dragons and that if disturbed, they
would send down storms and great floods. Visits to the top were
forbidden. Fireballs and flame-throwing dragons made regular
appearances on Pilatus and were described in great detail by
leading physicians and scientists — which gives you some idea of
what medicine was like at the time.

Even shepherds were placed under oath not to approach the dark
waters of the lake that sits just below the peak. There were
rumors that the Roman governor Pontius Pilate was buried in the
lake and his tormented spirit would surface every year on Good
Friday, in a vain attempt to wash Christ’s blood from his hands.

But not everything that came from the dragons was evil. A stone
called Draconite was believed to be formed in a dragon’s brain
and to pop out of its mouth during flight. There were nine types
of dragon stones, ranging from the Draconites carbunculus, about
the size of a peanut, to the Draconius lapis lucenenis, which was
as big as a goose egg. Drawings from the 1600s indicate that
these were all extremely heavy for their size, with gold-colored
flecks interconnected with filigreed veins. Dragon stones were
thought to have the power to protect against plague, revive tired
blood and under certain conditions, inspire individuals much like
Viagra.

The dragons themselves also appear to have had a hospitable
side — witness the following account:

One autumn, a cooper (barrel-maker) was foraging on Pilatus for
tree branches, to make hoops for his barrels. He stumbled and
fell headlong into a deep cave, coming to rest between two female
dragons, who were pleased by his arrival and offered him a dragon
stone. He soon became hungry. Observing how the dragons
repeatedly licked at a particular boulder in the cave, he did
likewise and so nourished himself throughout the winter. When
spring arrived, one dragon flew away from her winter lair. The
other circled cajolingly around the cooper, as if to persuade him
that it was time to depart. She crept to the mouth of the cave
and hoisted the cooper out by the tip of her tail. Thus rescued,
the cooper returned home to his family.

He showed his gratitude by having the story of his rescue
embroidered onto a cloth — which to this day remains in St.
Leodegar’s Church in Lucerne.

Sigmund Freud would have loved that story, and you’ve got to hand
it to the cooper for one of the all-time great excuses for not
coming home on time.

In 1585 a parish priest from Lucerne and a courageous group of
parishioners ascended Pilatus and challenged every pond and cave
where the dragons were thought to dwell. They threw rocks into
the lake, and churned its surface with a cross. The expected
counter-offensive by the dragons failed to materialize. The
priest and the courageous citizens returned to Lucerne and
announced that the spell had been broken, the spirits were at
peace and tourist trips to the peak (at a modest fee) could
begin. The dragons were Swiss and knew a good business when they
saw one.

Pilatus can be reached year-round from the town of Kriens by
panoramic gondolas and an aerial tramway. The cogwheel railway
runs from May through mid-December. For additional information,
visit the Pilatus
Web site.

The Swiss Path

A 30-minute drive south from the base of Mount Pilatus is the town
of Brunnen, which is the starting point for the Swiss Path, a
hiking trail that was built to celebrate the 700th anniversary of
the founding of Switzerland.

Each of the 26 states that make up modern Switzerland was given
part of the 23-mile path. The length of each stretch was set in
proportion to the number of people who lived in that state during
1991. In fact, every Swiss person was represented by 5
millimeters. Switzerland is a very precise democracy.

The path is also divided into six sections, each beginning and
ending in a small town. Boats connect each of the towns and
Lucerne and run throughout the day. When you are tired, you can
stop and get on a paddle steamboat, which will bring you back to
your starting point. The path forms a continuous symbolic chain
linking the states with each other, and the past with the future.
It’s a wonderful walk.

The original Swiss Army knife

Slightly off the Swiss Path is the town of Ibach. Which may not
mean much — until you find out that this is the home of the
company that makes the Swiss Army knife. Ibach is also home to
the only shop in the world that carries every model of the knife.

The founder of the company, Charles Elsener, was born in 1860 and
studied in both France and Germany until he became a master
knife-maker, specializing in razor edges and surgical
instruments. When he returned to Switzerland, he opened a small
workroom in his hometown and sold his knives in his mother’s hat
shop.

When he was 30, he organized the Association of Swiss Master
Cutlers, with the prime objective of cooperating in the
development of a pocketknife for the Swiss military. The army
already had knives, but they were being purchased in Germany. In
1891 the first Swiss-made knives were delivered to the Swiss
Army. The original version had a blade, a screwdriver, a reamer
for punching holes and a can opener. That was it.

Elsener’s descendants are still delivering Swiss Army knives to
the Swiss Army. However, a regulation issue Swiss Army knife is
not that little red number that has become world famous.
Regulation Swiss Army knives are made of a dull silver
lightweight aluminum alloy; they have one large blade, a reamer
for punching holes, a can opener with a small screwdriver (it
will work with a Phillips screw), a cap lifter, a big screwdriver
and a wire stripper.

What everyone who is not in the Swiss Army calls a Swiss Army
knife (the shiny red version with a Swiss Cross imbedded in the
handle) is actually the Swiss Army officer’s knife.

Elsener developed the early version of this knife in 1897, but
the Swiss Army never accepted it. Maybe the corkscrew and the
nail cleaner were too much. Nevertheless, it was immediately
accepted by the troops, both officers and enlisted men, who
purchased them with their own money, and still do.

When Charles’ mother, Victoria, died, he changed the name of the
company to honor her. Victoria knives soon became famous for
their quality. When stainless steel was developed in 1921, it was
called INOX. The Elseners added that word to the company name, to
become what it still is today: Victorinox.

From the beginning, Elsener was developing pocketknives for
different groups. During the 1890s he introduced the schoolboy
model, a farmer’s knife and a cadet knife; specialty
knives are still being added. Today the company produces more
than 400 versions of the Swiss Army officer’s knife, including
the soon to be introduced inline skater’s knife and the cyber
knife. During my visit, I heard unconfirmed rumors about a
“Clinton Blade” that would contain a cigar cutter, stain-remover
stick, magnifying glass and an extended selection of
screwdrivers.

Baffled, scientists struggled to come up with a few hypotheses: Maybe it was something in the red wine, they said. But while winemakers worldwide celebrated that news, more sober research has suggested that any alcohol — whether Lafite Rothschild, a banana daiquiri or a cold Bud — pretty much has the same nice, relaxing effect. So while a little wine is apt to do you good, the French aren’t so special in having a drink now and then (though the fact that they drink wine moderately and slowly with meals, instead of downing shots at the bar, could make a difference).

After the wine argument, scientists ventured that it must be the olive oil that keeps the French healthy. But this doesn’t explain the butter or brie. Then, voil`, French scientist Serge Renaud (made famous on “60 Minutes” as an expert on the French Paradox) said it’s the foie gras that melts away cholesterol. This, too, is dicey: While people in Toulouse — the fattened force-fed duck-liver-eating area of France — do indeed have one of the lowest rates of heart disease in the developed world, they actually only eat the delicacy about six times a year. And they’re a lot more likely to die of stroke than we are anyway.

Other researchers, perhaps sponsored by the garlic and onion industry, suggested that the French Paradox effect is due to garlic and onions. Claude Fischler, a nutritional sociologist at INSERM, the French equivalent of America’s National Institutes of Health, says all these single hypotheses are more wishful thinking than science.

“The government loves the French Paradox because it sells red wine — Bordeaux wine in particular — it sells French lifestyle and a number of other French products,” he tells me over dinner at an outdoor Paris bistro. “It’s something in the cheese! Something from the fat from ducks! It’s butter! Really, we’re a long way from science here.”

More than anything, Fischler thinks the French Paradox is a kind of cultural Rorschach test. “Americans think it’s unfair, and Francophiles think it’s wonderful.”

Last May, researchers writing in the British Medical Journal came up with the least cheerful hypothesis of all. They argued that it’s just a matter of time before the French — who are in fact eating more hamburgers and french fries these days — catch up with Americans, and begin suffering the same high rates of cardiovascular disease.

These researchers, Malcolm Law and Nicholas Wald (who must have thought up their hypothesis over dry kidney pie, while dreaming of the kind of duck in red wine and honey sauce I had with Claude Fischler), call this the “time lag explanation” for the French Paradox. As far as they are concerned, the McDonaldization (this is a French catch-all term for the importation of fast food and other American cultural horrors) of France will continue at a frantic pace, and it is as inevitable that French men will start keeling over of heart attacks as it is that French women will eventually wear jean shorts and marshmallow tennis shoes on the streets of Paris.

Nutritionists on this side of the Atlantic are just as dour in their predictions. Marion Nestle, chair of New York University’s department of nutrition, says that the wonderful food she found on every street corner in Paris when she lived there in 1983 has changed. “Then you could go into some local bar, and you would be given a little tart, a little salad and a little quiche that would knock your socks off,” she says wistfully. But now, she says, the quality of ingredients, the concern about flavor and the freshness of the food has declined. “Last time I was in Paris, everything seemed bigger, softer and more commercially prepared. If you wanted really high quality food, you had to pay for it.” When she looked at food data in France, she saw that indeed the amount of fat has risen, and the French are snacking more, eating fewer long meals and visiting McDonald’s more often on the sly. She, like Law and Wald, says, “Just wait.”

The French, however, disagree about this time lag hypothesis. Nor do they believe that Parisian women will start wearing Nikes with skirts to work anytime soon. “It’s hilarious!” says Fischler, finishing a fresh ricotta-stuffed tortellini appetizer. “The American attitude is always to look for a silver bullet — it’s the wine, the cheese — or else it has to be nothing, we’ll get worse, we haven’t had time to get the terrible consequences of modern eating.” Instead, says Fischler, the deeply rooted French traditions of eating not only explain the French Paradox, but will insure that it continues, even if it decreases somewhat.

Americans, he says, are always painting the picture in extremes. The French, he continues over a piece of grilled fish, pouring me another glass of that medicinal red wine, have a long-evolved culture of eating that emphasizes pleasure — and order. The French eat comme il faut, “the way it should be done.” They may eat whatever they want, but they eat by strict rules: no snacking, no seconds, no skipping meals, no bolting down food, no heading straight for dessert before first filling up on vegetables, salad and meat. They savor their food and eat smaller portions than Americans do.

They also eat a greater diversity of food, which could have something to do with their health, too. And while traditions are loosening in France — more women are working, and so people are more apt to grab a sandwich at lunch — a recent survey Fischler took showed that while more people will skip the cheese course or the first course once or twice a week, they still don’t skip meals. The French sit down at the table for well-prepared meals, with high-quality foods, and between times they don’t eat. Period.

“In France, we eat in a socially controlled and regulated way, but it’s pleasant,” says Fischler. “Structure is something that constrains you but also supports you.” Fischler and a food-loving University of Pennsylvania psychologist, Paul Rozin, say the fact that the French have lower rates of coronary artery disease and are skinnier than Americans doesn’t have so much to do with what they eat, but how they eat — especially their positive attitudes about food. Talk to a French woman about whether she ever feels guilty about what she eats and she will tell you, as one impossibly young-looking 46-year-old dancer told me, “Absolutely not — I eat exactly what I please.”

Then try to find a woman in the U.S. who will answer the same way. There’s no magic ingredient that keeps French arteries clear, but instead a whole system of eating that allows them to indulge without overdoing it, and without feeling guilty. Fischler and Rozin say that the biggest predictor of health may not be the content of someone’s diet, but how stressed out they are about food, and how relaxed they are about eating. In other words, the more pleasurable it is to eat, the healthier it is for you.

In a study published in the October issue of the journal Appetite, Fischler and Rozin surveyed 1,281 French, American, Japanese and Flemish people about their attitudes toward food. Participants were asked how much they worried about food and the healthiness of their diet, whether they bought low-fat and other diet foods and how much importance they placed on food as a positive force in life. Americans, it turned out, were much more likely than the French to worry about what they eat, buy diet foods and still think of themselves as unhealthy eaters. The French and Belgians were at the other extreme, thinking about food as mainly a great pleasure, and feeling fine about how healthy their diet was. In word association tests, given “chocolate cake,” the French would say “celebration,” and Americans, “guilt.” Given “heavy cream,” the French said “whipped,” while the Americans responded “unhealthy.” Says Rozin, “The French are more inclined to think of food as something you eat and experience, and the Americans are thinking about some sort of chemicals that are getting into your body.”

Americans have the worst of both worlds, Rozin says — they have greater concerns about their diets, and they are much more dissatisfied with what they eat. And that sort of stress, he says, can result in a lot of poor eating habits for Americans — extreme dieting, bingeing, overeating and constantly obsessing about food — which are ultimately unhealthy. The real paradox, Rozin says, isn’t that the French enjoy food and remain thin and heart disease-free. It’s that Americans worry so much about food, do so much more to control their weight and end up so much more dissatisfied with their meals.

American researchers are tentative about Fischler and Rozin’s pleasure hypothesis. Eric Rimm, a nutritional epidemiologist at Harvard, says a pleasurable way of eating may be part of the puzzle. “There is something to eating patterns that makes a difference to overall health,” he says. “It can’t just be the total calories you get at the end of the day.”

Eating slowly, he points out, may make a difference. And then there are psychosocial effects. “In France they eat with large families and social networks, which may be important to peace of mind, which has been linked to coronary disease.” He hesitates. “Maybe there are psychological effects to the way they eat in France, too.”

As the French would say, with just a hint of derision, “Mais oui — but of course.” And then, like Claude Fischler and me, they would finish off a long, perfect meal with a couple little spoonfuls of intensely rich chocolate souffli.

A table is set up and covered with offerings for the gods. The three main meats of the Chinese diet — pork, chicken and fish — are always there. Candles are lit, incense is burned, family prayers are offered and a little wine is poured, just to keep up the spirits of the spirits.

When the incense has burned down about halfway, the gods are considered to have had their meal. Chinese gods have a great diet. They don’t actually eat their food the way people do — gods and ancestors need only inhale the food’s aroma to absorb all of its nutritional and sensual elements. Eating, it seems, is not an essential part of their balanced diet. When the gods have finished, the remainder of the meal goes to the family and becomes everyone’s dinner.

The foods of the Chinese New Year are chosen for their symbolic meaning. Green foods mark growth and red foods signify warmth and good fortune, the same colors and meanings we see in the West as part of the Christmas celebration. Lotus seeds, peanuts and pomegranates represent a hope for the birth of children during the coming year — fruits with many seeds symbolize many offspring. If a married woman of childbearing age finds a dumpling filled with sugarcoated lotus seeds on her plate, it is a signal that she will have a son during the next 12 months. Recently, I heard that the widespread belief in the power of these foods has led to a movement advocating warning labels on their packaging.

This is the time for employers to thank their employees for working hard over the past months. Years ago, it was also the time for the employer to indicate any displeasure he was feeling. He would hold a banquet with a chicken in the center of the table, the head pointing toward someone who was going to be dismissed. Today, most bosses point the head toward themselves to avoid any misunderstanding and some of the larger corporations have turned to Chicken McNuggets.

The Chinese, like many other cultures, believe that what you need and enjoy in this world will be needed and enjoyed in the next. The way to send something from here to there is to reproduce the thing on special paper and then burn it. The fire transforms the essence of the object into smoke, which drifts up to heaven where it is reconstituted into its original form. The most popular use of this technique involves fake paper money. During the New Year’s celebration, hundreds of billions of phony dollars will be transferred to the upper banks.

In 1997, I celebrated Chinese New Year in Taiwan and witnessed the most outstanding use of this technology. A BMW automobile had been perfectly reproduced in paper and was being flamed to a beloved grandfather by his grandchildren. And I thought BMW’s European delivery program was sophisticated.

Chinese folklore says that in ancient times, “Year” was a fearsome beast that would come out of the mountains on New Year’s Eve with an appetite for human flesh, determined to find a tasty villager. As a result, a number of monster-avoidance techniques are recommended during the New Year’s Eve period. No. 1: Stay up all night so you can keep a lookout for suspicious-looking characters who might want to eat you. No. 2: Hang strips of red paper on your door — Year hates red. And No. 3: Set off the noisiest firecrackers you can find. Year is subject to migraine headaches and the din will send him back to the mountains.

When morning comes, everyone congratulates everyone else on not having become Year’s midnight snack. A ritual offering of respect is made to family ancestors — generally spirit money or luxurious foods. Then the gods are venerated and the younger members of the family show their respect for the older generation by turning down their CD players and bowing. The family then visits an incense-filled temple and goes to see friends and relatives to deliver a New Year’s greeting.

As the New Year progresses, the rituals continue. The third day of the New Year (Sunday) is considered a time of bad luck, so many people stay home. For certain animals however, it is believed to be a good day — especially for field mice, who hold their weddings on that day. Some people scatter rice in the field for the affair.

On the fourth day, the gods, who have been on vacation in the other world for the New Year, return to earth. They are welcomed back with firecrackers and offerings of spirit money. The welcome ceremonies often take place at the end of the day, since no one wants to offend a god who might be getting back a little late.

On the sixth day, spectacular lion and dragon dances begin. The seventh day is the anniversary of the creation of mankind and is marked by a seven-dish dinner and the lighting of seven candles. Of all the gatherings and festivals involved in the cycle of the lunar year, none is as dramatic or as ancient as the celebration of the Chinese New Year.

My search for — nay, my obsession with — illegal cheese began in France. “Why is this Camembert so much better than the Camembert in America?” I naively asked the waiter at Maisons de Bricourt in Brittany. “Because, Monsieur, it is made from — how do you say? — lait cru?” As I dodged the beads of saliva expelled by his deep guttural pronunciation of “cru,” deliberations ensued among the wait staff. They delivered the verdict: “Row milk!”

Images of dilapidated alcoholic cows drinking malt-liquor out of paper bags sprung to mind, but eventually we determined that what he meant was raw milk. Unpasteurized milk. Milk straight from the cow, still harboring all the wonderful bacteria that constitute the soul of great cheese. But it is this very rawness that makes the cheese illegal, and that’s what makes me a fugitive.

Listeria hysteria

A Frenchman invented the process that ruined most of the world’s cheese, but it took the ingenuity of the U.S. Food & Drug Administration to mandate pasteurization of just about everything.

It is legal to use unpasteurized milk in cheese only if that cheese has been aged more than 60 days (most potentially harmful bacteria die in this time). Tragically, this rules out all the young Brie, Camembert and Epoisses (most of which are aged around 30 days) that many consider to be the pinnacle of the cheese-making art. Steven Jenkins, author of “Cheese Primer” (Workman, 1996) and perhaps America’s leading authority on cheese, calls the pasteurized Brie and Camembert available in America, “pretenders — inauthentic impostors bearing their names.”

Still, there are fabulous raw-milk cheeses available that have been aged for over 60 days. But just because something is legal doesn’t mean it’s easy. Artisan raw-milk cheese-makers to whom I spoke said that FDA inspectors pay “extra special attention” to their facilities, and, according to a number of recent articles in the professional cheese press, a forthcoming round of proposed FDA regulations will seek to outlaw raw-milk cheeses altogether.

The ostensible fear is listeria, an obscure food-borne bacteria that the FDA says can, when the planets are in alignment, kill pregnant women, infants, the elderly and the otherwise infirm. But how serious is this threat? Are mothers really feeding raw-milk Camembert to their babies? And why not rely on clear labeling, rigorous inspection and informed consumer choice? It’s hard to believe that raw-milk cheeses are as dangerous as, say, cigarettes.

Cheese is not the only potential source of listeria — it can come from many food products, and, moreover, pasteurization is not a guarantee against listeria because the cheese can contract the bacteria even after treatment. I have consumed about 100 pounds of raw-milk cheese in the past few years; it is my testimony that the listeria threat is overblown. And, as the French are fond of taunting, historically the most severe outbreaks of listeria have occurred in countries like America, where young raw-milk cheeses are illegal.

Of course, the government is not entirely to blame. Accomplice liability for the murder of cheese certainly belongs to corporate laziness and the unimaginative American palate. We get the cheese we deserve, and as long as Cheez Whiz outsells Chevre there is not likely to arise a powerful anti-pasteurization lobby.

We have the winning combination of fear, greed and ignorance to thank for all the raw-milk cheese misinformation out there. These are the lies you will most commonly encounter when trying to ferret out raw-milk cheeses:

Lie No. 1: “It’s legal to import small quantities of young raw-milk cheese for personal use.”

Unpasteurized cheeses aged less than 60 days are illegal in the United States. Period. FDA regulations state in no uncertain terms that it’s illegal to make them, import them or sell them — and there is no exemption for personal use.

For a few months last year, a French company called Fromages.com flew below the radar and quietly shipped young raw-milk cheeses to eager American gourmets. After Fromages.com was outed by the New York Times and Bon Appetit, however, the ever-vigilant FDA swung into action and forced compliance. Marc Refabert, the company’s president, told me, “We think this, as many of our clients do, a violation to the freedom of choice and pleasure, particularly for products that have been around for centuries and are the basis of eating well. But so be it, we have no intention of trying to educate the FDA, or being in violation of their rules.”

Fromages.com still ships raw-milk cheeses, but they’re at least 60 days old (yet the company has not deleted from its site the press clips saying that Fromages.com will ship younger cheeses). Because of Fromages.com’s 24-hour air shipping, however, you can get plenty of cheeses that are 61 days old, and Fromages.com’s cheeses were in fact the best of any mail-order samples I received.

It remains to be seen whether Fromages.com will be able to work around a newly emerging problem: Due to a mini trade war with Europe over Europe’s importation, or lack thereof, of American beef, the United States has targeted Roquefort cheese for termination — imposing a 100 percent duty. At the time of my order, however, there had been no price change at Fromages.com.

Lie No. 2: “This cheese is made from raw milk.”

Now that raw-milk cheeses are trendy and popular with the idle-rich Cigar Aficionado set, merchants trying to capture this market have started pushing allegedly raw products. But even though the law views them as synonymous, there’s a big difference between unpasteurized and raw.

The FDA defines pasteurization along a sliding scale. Milk is pasteurized if it’s heated to 145 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes (which Jenkins calls “good” pasteurization) or to 161 degrees for 15 seconds (“bad” pasteurization, because, according to Jenkins, it fundamentally alters the taste of the milk). Anything else is considered raw by the FDA. So if you heat your cheese to 143 degrees for a hundred years, you can still label it raw. For example, the Grafton Village Cheese Company, an artisanal cheddar cheese producer in Vermont, heats its “raw” milk to 155 degrees for 10 seconds. Then again, Grafton’s cheese is excellent (the 3-year-old Grafton Gold cheddar was vastly preferred by my tasting panel to any other American cheddar we tried), which just goes to show you that pasteurization is not the only factor affecting a cheese’s quality.

Lie No. 3: “It’s impossible to find young, raw-milk cheeses in America.”

Well, they may be illegal, but I got some nonetheless.

I got them three ways: Through flagrant smuggling; by “Don’t ask, don’t tell” mail order; and from stores that had imported small quantities of illegal raw-milk cheese “by mistake.”

When smuggling cheese, your greatest enemy is the smell. A Ziploc bag may as well be a screen door for all it does to conceal the athletic-supporter aroma of a really ripe Epoisses. I suggest you take a cue from drug smugglers: Use multiple alternating layers of foil and plastic — and throw the dogs off the scent by surrounding the whole package with bags of coffee beans.

If you display the proper attitude and bearing, you can get some mail-order operations to send you illegal cheese. Just don’t appear too eager (a sure tip-off that you’re an FDA agent) and your order may be processed without comment.

Finally, a quick survey of the shelves of six New York-area gourmet stores revealed 17 probable incidents of mistaken importation of illegal cheese. A manager at one of the city’s largest cheese merchants told me, “Hey, sometimes it happens, so we sell it. French cheese labels are very confusing, especially to illiterate customs inspectors. We don’t make a big deal out of it, though — you understand?”

Nearly every cheese purveyor I interviewed admitted to trafficking in illegal cheese — and begged me not to use their names.

Secret report from the underground tasting panel

Charles DeGaulle asked, “How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?” and I understood how he felt as I tried to maintain order among a tasting panel of five opinionated and very homesick French people, an even more outspoken Spaniard and two overmatched Americans.

A journalist’s fantasy, when assembling a tasting panel, is to rock the boat. To fly in the face of convention. To have the tasters choose Manischewitz over Mouton. But with my cheese samples, there was no contest. The raw-milk Epoisses and Camembert, which I acquired illegally, beat the pants off the pasteurized poseurs. This superiority was clear from scent alone. Like pigs to truffles, all of the tasters flocked to the unpasteurized cheeses.

“It’s alive!” squealed Giselle, who has never read “Frankenstein,” upon tasting a semi-soft unpasteurized Saint Nectaire from Fromages.com, “It’s not dead like American cheeses.” Every one of the five cheeses I got from Fromages.com (which ships overnight to the United States via FedEx) elicited rave reviews, particularly the nutty Tomme de Savoie (Charles, who hails from that region, was so choked up when he tasted it that all he could do was nod) and creamy Abbaye du Mont des Cats (that must be a strange place).

Of course, you may not want to spring for air-shipped cheese from France every day (as a rule of thumb, figure that the shipping cost will equal the cost of the cheese), but luckily there are some excellent U.S. purveyors that offer cheeses of similarly high quality. We had the best luck with the cheese selection we received from Zabar’s in New York. One bleu cheese from Zabar’s, a piquant sheep’s milk Roquefort (from a French producer called Papillon), was judged superior to its milder Fromages.com counterpart. The group was similarly taken with Zabar’s Fourme d’Ambert, a cow’s milk cheese similar to Roquefort but a bit more subtle. The Fourme d’Ambert also made really good bleu cheese dressing about a week later.

Other first-rate mail-order sources of imported and domestic raw-milk cheeses are Dean & DeLuca, Balducci’s, Ideal Cheese and the Cheese Store of Beverly Hills. Inventories fluctuate rapidly (in part because some of the best cheeses are seasonal, and also because of unpredictable supply lines). Many of the cheeses I tasted for this article were no longer available by the time I put pen to paper just a couple of weeks later, so check each purveyor’s Web site for availability at the time of your order.

When asked to articulate the differences between the raw and pasteurized cheeses, most of the tasters followed Giselle’s lead and spoke in terms of “dead” and “alive.” Monique further explained it in terms of “fuller flavor, but not just fuller — also different.”

“Aha!” cried Victor, after the panel tasted the first of several Spanish cheeses, “The Spanish cheeses, they are superior. They have soul!” Even the French contingent had to admit that the big surprise of the tasting was the near-uniform excellence of the Spanish cheeses. The best was a very young raw-milk Afuegal Pitu (pronounced ah-FWAY-gal pee-TU, which means “sets your gullet on fire”) which one purveyor sent us (in error, of course). He explained, “The Feds are on the lookout for French cheese, but the Spanish stuff can still slip through.”

My personal favorite of the tasting was Ossau-Iraty, from the French Pyrenees. My other favorite was a Portuguese cheese, Queijo Azeitao. Both are from sheep’s milk, and both came from Zabar’s.

Close runners-up to Grafton for best American cheddar were Shelburne Farms Farmhouse Cheddar — call (802) 985-8686 for information — and Tillamook cheddar, at (800) 542-7290, but no American cheddar was able to best the Keens Cheddar (made by Neals Yard dairy in England) we got from Zabar’s. “There’s a hell of a lot going on in there,” said Joey, the other American panelist (besides me). For sheer English cheese selection (including Stilton, my favorite), the ultimate purveyor is the venerable firm of Paxton & Whitfield, on London’s Jermyn Street, which will ship worldwide (Paxton & Whitfield also has an extensive selection of the finest French cheeses). In the United States, there’s a very good selection of English cheeses at The British Shoppe in Madison, Conn.

There was little variation in packaging among the above mentioned purveyors. All cheeses were shipped in insulated boxes with frozen gel-packs. My samples shipped in August and September. On days when the temperature was average, the cheeses arrived well refrigerated. On very hot days, the gel-packs arrived melted and the cheeses were warm and soft. They sprung back to life in the refrigerator, however, and seemed to have suffered no ill effects. All samples arrived within a day of the expected date.

Jenkins recommends that you store cheese in the warmest part of your refrigerator (usually the vegetable drawer), wrapped in foil, wax paper or plastic wrap. Serve at room temperature — the cheeses we tasted were markedly better after they sat out of the refrigerator for about an hour.

And, most important, sweep for wiretaps before ordering illegal cheese.

The worlds corporate calendar is peppered with these invitation-only executive meetings. There is a published agenda for the events, but they also serve as gathering places where the most influential people in business can meet in an informal atmosphere and set a private agenda for future dealings.

In the days when power rested in the hands of kings and queens, the marriage of a fellow monarch brought the regents together for a formal event, but the course of world history was often altered at the private meals that took place around the official celebration. Flying in for the Global Business Dialogue on Electronic Commerce is not quite the same as attending the marriage of Louis XIV, but they are similar in the rich opportunities they offer for making important contacts.

During that first telephone conversation, Case described his vision of a future in which information and entertainment packaged by giant media companies would be delivered to the public on the Internet. He proposed a merger of their companies. AOLs home page could read:

YOU HAVE MAIL
CNN
TIME
SPORTS ILLUSTRATED

THE LATEST WARNER BROTHERS MOVIE

Pursuing a dream too powerful to resist, Case and Levin met on Nov. 1 for supper at the Rihga Royal Hotel on New Yorks West Side and began working toward a joint vision of the future. They met again on Nov. 17 for breakfast at the St. Regis Hotel on New Yorks East Side.

By the first week of January, the top negotiators had reached agreement on everything but the split on the new company. At first they had envisioned a 50-50 deal, but AOL stock was going up and Case was thinking that something like 60-40 was more appropriate.

If the deal was going to take place, Levin and Case needed to get together and settle this last issue. On Jan. 6, Levin grabbed a Time Warner corporate jet and headed down to dinner at Cases home in McLean, Va. Midway through the main course they reached agreement on 55-45 — and Case called for a bottle of Chbteau Lioville-Las-Cases 1990 to mark the moment.

Steve Case is a thoughtful man. In fact, Cases interest in Time Warner was to a great extent the result of AOLs strategic research. Like everything Case does, the choice of the Lioville 1990 must have been thought out — and, I figured, it must reveal a lot about what Case thinks of the deal.

So I checked with some of the worlds leading wine authorities.

My first call was to Kevin Zraly, author of “The Windows on the World Complete Wine Course” and one of the finest minds in the wine business. I asked Zraly: What messages does Case’s choice of wine send?

“This is one of the great wines of Bordeaux and one of Bordeaux’s largest estates,” Zraly told me. “It is a wine for perfectionists. At Chbteau Lioville-Las-Cases, everything is done to make the wine as perfect as possible.

“The motto of Chbteau Lioville-Las-Cases is:

Sui le lion qui ne mord point

Sinon quand l’ennemi me poing.

I am the lion which does not bite

Unless the enemy attacks first.

“The 1990 vintage was speculative and anyone who bought it as an investment when it first came out in 1992 probably did better than the stock market in terms of return on investment. In 1992, the wine sold at retail for $40 a bottle. Today, the suggested retail price is $325 a bottle, if you can find it! Bottom line — it was a great investment and one of the great vintages of the century.

“It’s also a wine with long-term implications, great to drink now but in my opinion, it will get better in the next 10-20 years. It’s a classic Bordeaux wine for long-term aging and enjoyment.

“In terms of taste, I would describe the wine as highly structured and with great concentration that will give pleasure for years to come.

“One final note: In the early 1800s, because of Napoleon’s inheritance laws, the Lioville estate was divided into three different properties. So there are actually three chateaux that now use the name of Chbteau Lioville. They are: 1) Chbteau Lioville-Las-Cases, 2) Chbteau Lioville-Poyferre and 3) Chbteau Lioville-Barton. Today, all three produce outstanding wines. Can you imagine what would happen if they merged together?”

My next call was to Michael Aaron, the chairman of Sherry-Lehmann Inc. in New York, one of the most respected wine merchants in the United States.

“By late 1999,” Aaron said, “the wine began to reach its plateau of perfection. If well stored, it will probably last another 30 years or more. Serving Lioville-Las-Cases at dinner demonstrated to Mr. Levin that Mr. Case had both hindsight and foresight in wine. An excellent investment, good now and with the potential to be great.”

I checked next with Robert Parker Jr., the author of “Bordeaux: A Comprehensive Guide to the Wines Produced from 1961 to 1997.”

“The 1990 continues to put on weight and richness and is now clearly the superior vintage,” he said. “Broad, expansive, rich, pure and concentrated, but never heavy or coarse. Beautifully integrated. Classic and full-bodied, velvety-textured, youthful but exceptional. This wine needs another five to six years of cellaring, after which it should last for 20-25 years.”

And finally, the comments of Hugh Johnson, author of “Hugh Johnsons Pocket Encyclopedia of Wine 2000″:

“A daunting reputation. Elegant, complex, powerful and austere. Meant for immortality.”

Of course, the new AOL-Time Warner stock limits you to three options: You can buy, hold or sell. With the Chbteau Lioville, you have all the same options, plus one: You can also drink — a downside I can always live with.