The nibbling classes love their fromage

GOATS' cheese (noun): white, tangy matter with mouth-drying properties; staple food of vegetarians. And that, before attending one of Phoebe Weller's chewtorials, was pretty much the limit of my chevre-based knowledge.

• Cheese night at Fifi & Ally's. Photograph: Donald MacLeod

No longer. Two hours and several hundred grams of fine artisan cheese later, I have joined the fromage-literate subdivision of the chattering classes. After one of Weller's tutored tastings I can now, theoretically, tell the difference between a sheep and goats' milk cheese. I could make a reasonable stab at its age. After a couple of glasses of something strong and red, I might even hold forth on the seasonal changes that a refined palate can detect in Flower Marie.

It is impossible to be around Phoebe Weller, who calls herself the Roving Fromagiere, and not become injected with some of the infectious knowledge that runs through her like blue veins. Picking the cheeses for a Thursday chewtorial (28-year-old Weller adores terrible jokes, which she puts down to spending long hours in unheated cellars full of animal-scented foodstuffs) starts on Monday. She visits Glasgow's two specialist cheesemongers, Iain Mellis on Great Western Road, where she used to work as an overdrawn student, and its new rival, run by George Mewes, a chum from her Mellis days. Mewes alone stocks 25 possible candidates. Once she has tasted them, noted their names in a little book, Googled them and cross-referenced existing tasting notes, she will come up with 12 finalists.

Actually buying them involves further visits to both shops, where she is welcomed like Justin Bieber at the primary seven disco. Weller makes herself quite at home. "George," she asks Mewes at one point, "are you getting a lot of bacterial growth in your gorgonzola?" "How's the St James tasting?" he fires back. "I thought it was a bit sheepy the other day." Weller considers this. "I thought it had a good balance, a bit chalky, that brought it down."

Everyone else in the shop, especially the couple who have just bought a 50 cheeseboard for a birthday dinner party, breathes a sigh of relief. The potential shame of serving an overly sheepy St James has been avoided again.

It was serving at Mellis, then west end institution Delizique, that convinced Weller of the demand for specialised cheese interpretation. People prepared to spend that kind of money on a sandwich filling want to know what they are buying. "When you're selling fine food you need time to talk and space to explore what you are offering. The allotted six minutes per customer is not enough." In April, she hung up her pinny, persuaded a west end cafe to let her fill the place with cheese geeks once a week and started her first course of eight chewtorials.

Imagine a book club where you don't have to pretend to have read The Time Traveler's Wife. You just turn up, eat the nibbles, pronounce your opinions and write down other people's sparkling comments to pass off as your own at a later date.

Venue for tonight's session – Weller is, after all, a roving fromagiere – is Fifi & Ally, the monochrome temple of post-shopping coffee and 10 salads in Glasgow's Princes Square. She has colonised a long table beside the window and changed out of her sturdy, cheese-shopping outfit into a black dress, navel-length string of wooden beads and mulberry tights with thigh-to-calf ladder.

The effect is slightly incongruous. Weller, whose idea of post-cheese eating conversation includes a detailed description of a cockroach-infested earth toilet in Tonga, is not really a black candelabra and cup cake person. She looks as if she could milk the goat as well as discuss the nuances of its cheese. Instead of Fifi & Ally's smart white flatware, she has brought her own funkier mix of flowery and willow-patterned plates. These give her, she says, "a sense of stability". At every place there is a print-out, which appears to have been created with vintage Letraset, listing the 12 cheeses on the chopping block this evening. These sit, happy at room temperature, on a row of six glass plates. By 6:45pm everything is ready, leaving Weller to flick through her tasting notes fretfully, remove a tea towel from her shoulder and twist her tights into a ladder-disguising formation.

Then she spots them. "Ahah! Cheese people!"

Tracy and Sophie are new recruits. Sophie, a veteran taster of wine, whisky and chocolate, discovered Weller and her world of cheese by a most 21st century method: "A random friend liked her page on Facebook, I looked at it and I thought, that sounds like me." Tracy, Sophie's civil partner, is a pale vegetarian who is allergic to penicillin. She looks a little alarmed at the prospect of an evening of cheese that may be made with animal rennet, with rinds and blue veining which may provoke a toxic reaction.

Other tasters arrive. Berkeley, a Canadian who is not named after a Californian university, has done most of Weller's previous courses. Amy, a member of Weller's large circle of cheese chums, has done a few.

Frank, a male newbie, shuffles in and removes his tweed jacket. Weller, ready to start, is starting to paw the ground like a pony. There are rules. "Don't touch the cheese!" She will hand it out in order and there must be no naughty nibbling. If we absolutely dislike the taste of anything, we should eat a piece of bread.

Three more people, including another chap, sit down as Weller dishes out three dods of white matter. Troncetto di Capra Naturale is made near Venice from pure young goat milk. Then there is a fine Spanish feta and, for comparison, a lump of regular feta from the Co-op in Ibrox. We must give these a good sniff and study the colour carefully before committing to the jaws.

I apply cheese to nose before applying Troncetto to mouth. It tastes as soft and white as it looks, rather like a farmyard-scented cloud.

"Ooh, it's much goatier than I expected," says Weller, who has spent years visiting producers, breaking rind with Iain Mellis himself and getting the vocabulary of flavours off pat. "I'm getting nuttiness, a lemon tang, a slight sourness." Turns out that the Spanish one is made with a mixture of sheep and goat milk, which is common for small artisan producers throughout Europe. Sheep have such a short lactation period that sometimes they throw in cows' milk as well. There is no mould as feta is kept in brine. Even in Ibrox.

Next is Flower Marie, one of Weller's own personal pets. It is also Antony Worrall Thompson's favourite cheese, a splendid sheep's milk brie, made in Sussex, with a gooey edge where the proteins are breaking down. Its many charms leave Weller teetering on Jilly Goolden territory, finding "sweetness on the nose, then floweriness, herbs, grass, more flowers".

Forget the flowers. There is a lot of cheese to get through. After we have tried Golden Cross, Weller admits that, when she was putting it out on the plate, she removed a slice of mould. Then ate it. "Very deeply savoury." Kes, a late arriver sitting at the far end of the table, detects walnut. Weller smiles approvingly. "Well observed."

So many facts and flavours. The Ticklemore is made in Woolworth's colanders. It has an aggressive mustiness. The fat content is low at the moment, because the goats have moved to their winter pasture, so there is no gooey rind.

"Spearmint!" says Sophie. "I'm getting spearmint!" Weller widens her eyes. "Like a cleansing spearmint? I'll go with that."

We progress through the Berkswell – great for cooking – to Tymsboro and Valencay, made to the same recipe, in the same shape, but in different places. The smell of the Valencay reminds Sophie of "student hops and undergraduate flats". Weller has many theories about the relationship between cheese and body odour. She describes one, thankfully not on the table this evening, as "smelling like balls".

It is time to try Ossau Iraty, a sheep's milk cheese from south-western France. Amy reveals she has some of this in the fridge. She looks about 19. At that age, I thought Fine Fare's camembert the height of sophistication and high living. It comes with a tasting companion, Pyrenees chevre, which is, according to Weller. "really posh Dairylea. But so nuanced, with a dirty kick at the back. It's gooey, fudgy fudgy fudgy, then dirty. With a long bitter end."

Berkley has never tasted Dairylea. Should she pick some up the next time she is shopping at Mellis? The table assures her not to bother.

The Beenleigh Blue has disintegrated. Weller gives us all a pile of lumps. Then comes what she calls "the killer cheese", St James. It smells, she says, "a bit footy". Others suggestions: "hamster cage", "wet dog". Happily it chews much better than it sniffs.

The formal part of the tutorial is over. Chris, the late-arriving young man, has eaten only half of each of the tasting samples. He has arranged the other half in a circle on his plate, to photograph for his colleagues. As we pick over the leftovers, the conversation ranges through a predictable foodie canon: Fifi & Ally's wine list, Waitrose v Co-op, the time Weller stored so much cheese behind her storm doors that it smelled like a dead body.

Eating another piece of Ossau Iraty, Sophie detects steak. Weller's eyes widen again. "Browning steak?" Much nodding.

So I try another bit. I give it a good old sniff, put it in my mouth and – yes! Once I know what I'm looking for, I find a caramelised note that is very reminiscent of raw beef hitting the frying pan.

Next time, I want the balls.