Rob Kaufelt, the owner of the influential Greenwich Village gustatory emporium Murray’s Cheese Shop, does not claim Murray as any part of his name. (The store was named after Murray Greenberg, who opened it in 1940.) But he looks and talks like a Murray; that is, he’s easygoing and unpretentious, with regular-guy good looks that put people at ease. Put another way, the name of his store isn’t fancy, and he doesn’t act fancy either.

“I’ve realized in the last year or two, I’d gotten a bit snobby about cheese,” he said. “And we don’t like to be that way at Murray’s.” He tells a story about visiting his sister for Thanksgiving, armed with fromage aplenty. Dinner wasn’t due to hit the table until 6 p.m., and folks were peckish. How about some cheese, Rob? He balked: As eaten in the world’s culture capitals, cheese was served last. The hungry clan rebelled, and Mr. Kaufelt capitulated. “We had the cheese before,” he said.

You can’t blame him for feeling his products deserve pride of place at a meal. If pressed curds can inspire awe, his do. Scan the long glass display case in Murray’s roomy new Bleecker Street location – across the street from the cramped corner storefront where the store dwelled until last September – and your head spins a bit. There are hundreds of wheels, wedges, blocks, and pyramids in shades from snow-white to orange-yellow. They’re all cheese, but only in the way that rottweilers, beagles, and collies are all dogs. Most are made by hand, and hail from some distant Welsh plain or windswept Pyrenees mountaintop that you or I would never have reason and chance to pass through. Mr. Kaufelt finds and imports these dairy delicacies himself, and you won’t find many of them anywhere else but Murray’s.

Mr. Kaufelt, a youthful-looking 57 (“It must be the cheese”), senses the layman’s hunger for a field guide. That’s why he started a series of cheese courses last February. “Who knows about all these cheeses? Not too many people. Even we ourselves are learning about them all the time. Part of our mission is education. And there’s always an interest in food education, particularly among New Yorkers. What started with Julia Child is now a profusion of cookbooks and cooking shows.” He shrugs, and then – in a characteristic move – strikes a less serious note. “Or maybe, for all I know, people cook less, and just take more classes and watch moreTV.”

The classes have been selling out. The most popular seminar is Mr. Kaufelt’s own “Cheese 101.” Here, a student sits before a sampler of the six basic categories (fresh, bloomy, washed rind, semi-firm, hard, blue), a few glasses of wine, a basket of bread, appetizers from olives to dried apricots, and a pitcher of water. The portions on the plate are arranged clockwise, from youngest and softest (a milky burrata from Puglia, at the class I sat in on) to the hard and aged (a 5-year-old Gouda). A half dozen is the right amount for a tasting, Mr. Kaufelt said: “How many flavors can you stand at one time?”

It’s rather amusing to hear Mr. Kaufelt soberly say things like, “I think cheese is a long-term trend”; any sentence with the word cheese in it sounds funny, as he will readily admit. But he’s right. As with wine, bread, and many other staple foodstuffs, American interest in cheese has exploded in the past decade, with the public’s increased desire for both luxury products and artisanal, so-called “real” food. He now sells 10,000 to 12,000 pounds of the stuff a week, and supplies 75 restaurants with everything from Gorgonzola to Gruyere.

The chefs of Gotham Bar and Grill and Daniel make for some pretty colorful colleagues. But then, Mr. Kaufelt’s world is not strictly a prosaic one populated by overall-clad dairy farmers. It contains exotic creatures – such as affineurs, the specialists who turn, wash, and nudge cheeses along to aged perfection. Thanks to Murray’s, New York City has at least one person, Sasha Davies, who can claim that improbable occupation on their income-tax form. But Mr. Kaufelt’s favorite affineur is Herve Mons, a French master who advised him on building the five new cheese caves that sit in Murray’s basement. Walk into one of the climate-controlled, vaulted stone chambers and you quickly realize just how bad a job your fridge is doing in keeping your cheese fresh. Advice for those whose domiciles lack cheese caves: use wax paper, not plastic. Beyond that: “I recommend you eat it up.”

Even more intriguing than the affineurs are the “cheese rock stars,” glamorous practitioners like Vermont’s Mateo Kehler, of Jasper Hill Farm, who produce something so delectable they develop an aura. (Mr. Kehler will be a guest instructor at Murray’s on April 13.) “We’re talking about our own little tiny world,” Mr. Kaufelt explained, somewhat sheepishly. “Within that group, you’ll find somebody who’s got the talent and a certain amount of charisma. They tend to do the thing for real, and be good at it.”

But what makes them rock stars? “Girls, mostly. And some groupies.” He’s kidding, but only just.

“The first one I met that was in that category was this fellow named Tillo Gelpke from Tuscany. His family has had a vineyard for a couple generations. He spun off a cheese operation, making this really great Pecorino Toscano. Very small production – doesn’t export it, we don’t sell it. He rides around on a motorcycle; always has a hand-rolled, filterless cigarette hanging from his mouth. There’s always women coming from Scandinavia or Germany to work on the farm for a month or two. You get the picture.”

And then there is the staff at Murray’s. Not rock stars, mind you, but characters nonetheless. “The counter people are crotchety,” mused Mr. Kaufelt. “They’re eccentric. We all are. Why would somebody go into cheese?”

Good question. Where do these caseophiles come from? “We’re fortunate that in this new food era they come here. In the old days, it could be anybody. When I bought Murray’s, it was me and Frankie Meilak, who had been the delivery boy and lives in the neighborhood. And it was Louie Tudda, who I bought the store from, who stayed for a year before he went back to Italy. Then there was Emilio, who was the counterman with Louie. He was from the Dominican Republic. That was it. It was the four of us behind the counter. Now it’s Liz Thorpe, who’s running the wholesale – she went to Yale; and Sarah Zaborowski, assistant store manager – she went to Bryn Mawr. It’s many more smart, well-educated, young people.”

One wonders about the professional fate of all these Ivy League cheesemongers. Their boss wonders, too. “I’m not sure what the career opportunities are, frankly. I never thought there was one here for me!” For the time being, though, Mr. Kaufelt is glad all that education is standing behind the Murray’s counter. “Service is a luxury in the modern era. Many of our competitors are getting further away from service. The fact that there’s somebody knowledgeable there that’s going to take care of you and cut it fresh from the wheel and give you a taste! Wouldn’t you want a taste of something that you didn’t know what it tasted like, before you plunk down your $10?” He raises his eyebrows just a bit. “There’s a lot of weird stuff down there.”