How many types of cheese are there?
There's no honest single number. Catalogues list around 1,800 named varieties worldwide; France alone runs from 400 "official" cheeses to an estimated 1,600; and loose counts pass 4,000. The reason it's so slippery: a "type of cheese" is just a few variables — milk, moisture, age and mould — combined, and every region combines them its own way.
Build a cheese from its variables
The thousands of cheeses come from combining just a few choices. Pick some and see what lands.
24 well-known cheeses, not the whole 1,800 — enough to show how four simple choices generate thousands.
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So how many cheeses are there?
Pick a source and you'll get a different answer. The reference catalogue cheese.com lists roughly 1,800 named varieties; Britain's cheese body claims more than 700 regional cheeses on its own; and the loosest counts, which treat every farmhouse make as distinct, sail past 4,000. None is "wrong" — they're counting at different resolutions. Cheese resists a clean tally for the same reason a language resists a clean dictionary: it's alive, regional and constantly being remade.
The France question
France is where the counting gets famously hard. In 1962, quoted in Newsweek, Charles de Gaulle grumbled, "How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?" — and even that number was a moving target. Today France is usually credited with over 400 officially recognised cheeses, organised into eight families ("les huit familles de fromage"). But once you count every regional variation, the Institut fromages et santé puts the real figure at 1,000 to 1,600. The driver is terroir: cows grazing salt-marsh grass in Normandy make a fundamentally different cheese from those eating alpine wildflowers in Savoie, and France's AOC/PDO laws then freeze each of those differences into a protected, named variety.
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The few variables behind the thousands
Strip cheese back and it's curdled milk pushed along four dials, which is exactly what the tool above lets you turn. Milk sets the base note — cow is mild and creamy, sheep grassy and sweet, goat sharp and tangy, buffalo richly fatty. Moisture decides texture, from wet fresh curds to bone-dry grating cheese. Age (affinage) concentrates and transforms flavour over weeks to years. And mould or rind — bloomy white, sticky washed, or veined blue — adds the final character. Four dials, a few settings each, and the combinations already run into the thousands before regional names multiply them again.
Where the flavour actually comes from
The drama is in the ageing. A young Parmigiano-Reggiano is bland and rubbery; after 24–36 months its proteins break down into crystalline amino acids, giving that sharp, crunchy bite. Blue cheeses are deliberately inoculated with Penicillium roqueforti and then pierced with steel needles so air can feed the mould into those veins. Washed-rind cheeses get their pungency from bacteria encouraged by regular brine or alcohol wipes. And the holes in Emmental aren't cut — they're carbon-dioxide bubbles released by Propionibacterium as the cheese matures. Same milk, wildly different outcomes, depending entirely on what you let grow.
Even one "type" isn't one thing
Part of why the count balloons: a single name hides a family. "Cheddar" spans mild block supermarket cheese, crumbly vintage aged two years, and clothbound farmhouse wheels that taste almost nothing alike. "Blue" covers sheep's-milk Roquefort, cow's-milk Stilton and creamy Italian Gorgonzola. Ask "how many types of cheddar" or "how many blues" and you've simply opened a smaller version of the same unanswerable question — which is the whole charm of it.
Frequently asked
How many types of cheese are there in the world?
There's no agreed figure. Catalogues such as cheese.com list around 1,800 named varieties, France alone is estimated at 1,000–1,600, and looser counts run past 4,000. The number depends entirely on how finely you split varieties.
How many types of cheese are there in France?
France is usually said to have over 400 officially recognised cheeses, grouped into eight families ('les huit familles de fromage'). Counting every regional variation, estimates rise to between 1,000 and 1,600. In 1962 Charles de Gaulle joked about governing a country with 246 varieties of cheese.
What are the main categories of cheese?
By texture and rind: fresh (feta, chèvre), bloomy soft (Brie, Camembert), washed-rind (Munster, Époisses), semi-hard (Gouda, Manchego), hard (Parmigiano, Comté), blue (Roquefort, Stilton) and stretched-curd (mozzarella). Milk type — cow, goat, sheep or buffalo — adds another axis.
Is American cheese real cheese?
Most sliced 'American cheese' is legally a 'pasteurised prepared cheese product' — real cheese blended with emulsifiers and extra milk or whey for its melt. It starts as cheese but isn't sold as a single variety.
Can lactose-intolerant people eat cheese?
Often yes, in moderation: hard aged cheeses like Parmigiano, Cheddar and Gruyère contain very little lactose because ageing converts the milk sugar into lactic acid. Fresh cheeses retain more.
Sources
- cheese.com — catalogue of roughly 1,800 named cheese varieties worldwide.
- Wikipedia, List of French cheeses — de Gaulle's 1962 "246 varieties" quote (Newsweek); the eight families; 1,000–1,600 estimate citing the Institut fromages et santé.
- British Cheese Board — claim of 700+ named British cheeses.
- Roquefort — first product granted French AOC protection, 1925.
- General dairy science for affinage, blue-cheese inoculation (Penicillium roqueforti) and Emmental's CO₂ "eyes" (Propionibacterium).
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Related
De Gaulle counted 246 and gave up governing them. The real number is whatever you get from four dials and a few hundred years of villages disagreeing.