WHATEVER next! The French, it seems are yet again taking their gastronomic lead from us Brits. Our Gallic friends over the Channel who once took huge down-your-nose delight in mocking their ‘rosbif’ cousins because all we apparently dished up in restaurants was beef warmed up in hot gravy with Yorkshire puds, have now discovered tea.

We’ve known the benefits of avez vous un cuppa for generations and have long extolled its reviving and chin-wagging properties. Whether it’s a builders’ brew or something more china-cup delicate, we drink 162 million cups of it a day, roundly beating off the café culture of the coffee revolution which sees a mere 70 million cups and cardboard cartons supped by coffee lovers.

Time was that asking for a cup of tea in a French caff was likely to get you a glass, a pot of hot water and a tea bag on a string banged disdainfully on the table. And if you dared to ask for milk it normally came hot and frothy. But now the French have undergone a tea transformation, which has seen an upsurge in specialist tea salons, classes in how to drink and serve it and hundreds of varieties and blends now on sale.

Tea, it seems, is now the French middle classes’ drink of choice. The French clearly have a long way to go before they get to our everything-stops-for-tea level of consumption but they’re clearly embracing its top quality properties.

Just as they’ve done with our cheese. Yes, that’s right, cheese…. For in the past 15 years or so, exports to France of our glorious, unctuous, beautiful British cheese – some of the best of which is produced right here in Yorkshire – has more than doubled alongside other Brit delicacies such as whisky, our sparkling wines and our beef.

Tradition has dictated that for generations French produce has knocked spots off ours. But not any more - the country that gave us roquefort and brie is now buying our Stilton and cheddar by the barrow load, quaffing our whisky like tomorrow is oblivion and saying very nice things about English wines. One French food writer even went as far as to say that our Stilton cheese was better than anything she can get in her native country. Blummin’ ‘eck! Or should that be sacre bleu…?

You’ve only got to look at what we get up to here in God’s Own County to know that it’s true. For instance, there are nine – yes, nine – commercial vineyards in Yorkshire, which is a factoid to blow your socks off if you’re into your victualling.

One of them is about to launch the northern-most produced sparkling wine using Champagne grapes that’s ever been made. And the only thing that stops it being called Champagne is because the grapes have grown on the southern-facing slopes of Ryedale rather than those in the Champagne region of France.

Yorkshire-reared beef is fast gaining a reputation for being the best Britain has to offer. Forget your charolais or limousin – Dexter cattle fed on Yorkshire beer, for instance, is producing top quality beautifully tender and marbled meat that’s wowing them in top notch London restaurant kitchens as well as over the water.

There’s hardly a rural corner of this county that doesn’t have a conscientious farmer in it lovingly rearing quality beasts that live happy and die stress free.

As for our cheeses – well, where to begin? Think Shepherds Purse at Thirsk where Judy Bell and daughters Caroline and Katie are consistently turning out world cheese award winners.

Botton Creamery high on the North York Moors near Danby is barely keeping up with demand, such is the quality of the cheese that comes out of this Camphill Village Trust-run dairy. And what makes this place so special is that the cheese making process is providing work for adults with special needs and learning difficulties so fulfilling a caring social role too.

High up on the Wolds, former York University PhD student Jacquie Broadhead runs a self-sufficient smallholding where her cattle provide milk for her cheese, her rare breed pigs get fed on the whey and mash tun waste from Wold Top Brewery down the road, and sheep follow on the pasture behind to keep her grassland under control ready for grazing the following year.

And at Bridlington – seen by some to be the less attractive cousin to big and bold Scarborough and picturesque, smuggler-rustic Whitby – they land more shellfish per year than anywhere else in Europe. And guess who gets most of it? Yes, the French…

No wonder they’re bringing the Tour de France over here in 68 days’ time. If only to see top-notch food and drink quality for themselves.