Going to have to pick you up on something here.
Let’s examine the evidence…..
1/ Excess is the theme
2/ There’s 8 of you
3/ You’ve listed nine cheeses
4/ You claim to have spent £40+
Now – unless the + bit of that statement is a substantial plus, then something doesn’t add up. Put another way – what are the other 7 people going to eat 😉 ?
I bloody love cheese me, and could do £40 on my own 😳
Re: where to get good cheese. If you want to be serious, google the local area for deli’s, specialists, and also quite a few farm shops have decent selections, although they aren’t always brilliantly kept.
And, a decent cheesemonger will let you try stuff before buying and also know what different cheeses are tasting like over the course of a year. Particularly the little ones, which often have total provenance of the herd where the milk came from and when, using single batch milk, often unpasteurised, and the milk and hence cheese does change subtly in flavour as grazing conditions change through the year, just like the same wine from the same vines can be quite different from year to year based on the growing conditions. So because you liked a cheese once doesn’t always mean it’ll taste exactly the same next time you buy it – unless that’s what you want in which case there are lots of very good mass-produced cheeses where homogeneity is important.
And above all seek out some Stichelton. Christmas isn’t Christmas without.