Time to say cheese

Hobby Club

An initiative of Nino Ciccarone, the director of Alliance Francaise and Daniel Dubosclard, a cheese master and exporter, the AF Cheese Club could be of interest to all cheese lovers.

The club was formed a year ago and has around 120 members, both Indian and French, in Bangalore. “Daniel was making cheese in France a few years back,” informs Nino. But soon Daniel settled down in Bangalore, met up with Nino and the club was born. “We thought why not introduce French cheeses to the people of Bangalore,” says Nino.

 An interesting feature of the get-togethers is that the members are also introduced to different wines. “Cheese goes extremely well with wine. But there are certain wines that go well with certain types of cheeses. So we promote wine according to the cheese, and have even prepared charts and tables on the same,” says Nino.

Agrees Maureen, a wine expert, who is an important member of the club and attends these get-togethers regularly. “The idea of a club is to have a group of people with common likes,” she says. “The reason behind this club was that there are a lot of expats in Bangalore, who miss the wine and cheese served in our country. We felt we should combine the two to form cheese and wine evenings. Besides, you can’t have cheese without wine.”

She adds, “Cheese and wine evenings were not done on such a large scale before.”
Being far away from home, it’s a great feeling for most of the expats in the City to be able to taste different types of cheese.

“We are so used to eating cheese in France and now its possible to source them in Bangalore,” she smiles. Maureen’s favourite form of cheese is Raclette, which
is semi-firm and delicious. “It’s tender and extremely tasty with a lot of flavour. It is golden yellow in colour.”

Most of these evenings are feel-good and provide an opportunity for the members to interact with one another. But the club is planning to introduce a few talks and conferences on cheese in future. Each event is based on a certain theme, basically cheeses from the different regions of France.

“Plus we aim to do something different in every meeting of ours. For instance, we want to organise a cheese and art evening or a cheese and jazz evening,” notes Nino.
A majority of the cheese and wine evenings are held at Alliance Francaise. The most recent event was organised at a popular City hotel. The next get-together is currently scheduled for November 15.

The AF Cheese Club is open to all with a nominal fee. “Anyone who is a cheese fan can be a part of the club,” says Maureen. For details, mail [e-mail]