the 10 best cheeses in the world revealed

Not a single French cheese has made it into a new top 10 list of the best cheeses in the world, and France's foodie community is outraged.

Bulgaria-based company TasteAtlas has released its ranking of its 100 most popular cheeses – and Italy dominated throughout.

Italian cheeses take up eight of the top ten spots, with Parmigiano Reggiano, Burrata and Grana Padano taking the top three spots.

The first entries on the list for France were Reblochon and Comté, in 13th and 14th place respectively.

The results sparked a confused French A cheese merchant told the news channel BFMTV: “The judges must have been Italians!” The programme also claimed that the Italians were simply better at marketing their cheese products worldwide than the French. That's fighting spirit!

TasteAtlas' often controversial rankings are supposedly compiled by international food critics, which makes Italy's dominance all the more surprising. In fact, only two non-Italian cheeses made it into the top ten. These were the Portuguese Queijo Serra da Estrela at number 7 and Bundz, a Polish sheep's cheese, which came in at number 9.

BFMTV said the results were a “devastating blow for French gastronomy” but if France wants another country to feel sorry for, it only has to hop across the Channel. Britain fared significantly worse than its neighbours because, despite having numerous iconic dairy cheeses, not a single one of its cheeses appeared.

This is not the first time that France has licked its culinary wounds in the Taste Atlas ranking. Last year, the ranking came under criticism for placing France behind the USA in its list of the best cuisines in the world.

The website responded to a number of complaints by saying that its lists reflected the tastes of real people and added in a statement: “Don't hate us, we're just counting the votes.”