Irish farmhouse cheesemakers are in a golden era, producing a scintillating range of cheeses. John McKenna acts as tour guide.

There are always surprises to be found if you go hunting for new Irish farmhouse cheeses. At the Saturday morning market in Skibbereen, for instance, you will find Fingal Ferguson selling Big Smokie, huge yolk-yellow truckles of smoked and aged Gubbeen cheese, sold only at the local markets by the cheese smoker himself.

Bite into a piece, letting all those taste elements from fine milk and expert smoking waft their way though your senses, and you will praise yourself for getting up out of bed early at the weekend.

Call into Trevor Irvine's smashing little shop, Cheese Etc, hard by the bridge at Carrick-on-Shannon, and you might find Killoran, a new cheese from the south Sligo Cheese Company, a sweet, fudgey mouthful with an excellent long after taste.

Ask the names of Trevor's best-sellers and alongside those cheeses that have become significant artisan brands over the past 20 years - Cashel Blue, St Brendan, Milleens - you will be told that Lucy Hayes's Mount Callan mature cheddar from north Co Clare is a big seller, as is the Hegarty family's St Gall and Bellingham Blue from Co Louth.

At the weekly Saturday market in Midleton, Jane Murphy will be selling her fine Ardsallagh goats cheeses, but the ones to hunt down here are some of the extra-mature goats cheeses, some aged for up to three years. If you find yourself holidaying in Co Clare, take a close look at the cold counter in some of the county's wholefood shops, for it is here that you will find some of Anneliese Bartelink's rare-as-hen's-teeth Poulcouin cheeses.

Rare they certainly are, but these are in fact some of the finest farmhouse cheeses made in Ireland.

Another regional rarity are the Dorian cheeses made in north Donegal by bio-dynamic farmer Thomas Becht, wrapped in bright green plastic coats.

If you are taking some time out on the lake in Tipperary, don't imagine that the county only produces the brilliant Cashel Blue and Cooleeney cheeses.

Take a stroll into Peter Ward's shop, Country Choice, on Kenyon Street in Nenagh, Co Tipperary, and get the man himself to sell you a piece of the fine Baylough cheese, made by Anne Keating at the farm just outside Clogheen. While you are buying your Baylough, chances are he will also sell you many other fine foods you didn't know existed: don't even try to resist his charm: you won't be able to.

Hygiene regulations require any visitor to a cheesemaker's dairy to be kitted out with coats, hats and boots, which makes visiting farmhouse cheesemakers impractical. In addition, the high costs of public liability insurance make it virtually impossible for small dairies to insure visitors - but that should not deter Irish cheese voyagers. In fact, finding the right shop, staffed by the right knowledgeable folk, is not just the key to finding out what is new in farmhouse cheeses, it is also the best way to get a crash course into the variety of our artisan cheeses.

I have lost count of the number of times I have waited in Val Manning's shop, Manning's Emporium, in Ballylickey, west Cork, as he has chatted and charmed a bunch of tourists through an impromptu cheese-tasting. Last time I was in, an English visitor, who was leaving the shop with a groaning weight and selection of cheeses, said: "I just hope it's as much fun eating them all as it has been buying them!"

Exactly the same thing happens day in day out at Sheridan's Cheesemongers in Galway city, especially when the brothers set up their stall at the Saturday market.

It happens in The Connemara Hamper, in Clifden, as Eileen and Leo Halliday let folk taste and choose their way through the artisan cheeses and, if you find yourself in the CH, look out for the soft sweet goat's milk cheese, Bluebell Falls, made by Paul Keane, a cheese rarely seen away from the west coast.

At The Kitchen in Portlaoise, Jim Tynan and his excellent staff can guide you from Durrus Farmhouse Cheese via Knockalara and on to Mine Gabhar. At Limerick city's Saturday market, while you are looking out for an aged slice of Kilshanny from Co Clare, do get Marie from the Greenacres stall to let you sample through a selection of cheeses.

The Courtyard in Schull is another place in which to get introduced to the various west Cork cheeses, while a detour into the English Market in Cork will bring you to one of the best cheese counters in the country, at the splendid Iago stall.

If the cheese bug bites big time, then a destination address you need to know about is the shop at Aillwee Caves, just outside Ballyvaughan, at the edge of The Burren in north Co Clare. Here, not only can you buy the splendid prize-winning - and extremely rare - Burren Gold cheese made by Ben Johnson, but you can also see the cheese-making process in action, as the milk is heated, the starter added, the curds form and are drained and shaped.

Seeing cheese being made is a magical experience, because it highlights how individual skill is the secret of every artisan cheese. All cheesemakers in Ireland use the same basic ingredients, but no two of these fine farmhouse cheeses are even remotely the same.

John McKenna is author of the Bridgestone Guides - www.bridgestoneguides.com