Looking for a good cheese soup

I tried a new cheese soup recipe the other night.

Well, to be perfectly forthright, I actually took two and kind of combined them.  You know, they were very similar to each other, so I just took the parts from each that I liked the best, figuring that would be the best way to end up with a final product that I liked.

Both used 8 cups of chicken stock (and of course I used homemade).  One had shallots and the other had onions, celery, and carrots, and since I happened to have some celery in the fridge (which almost never happens) I went for that one.  I figured using carrots and celery would only add to the flavor.

One used cheddar cheese and one used fontina, and I had quite a bit of already shredded cheddar, so I decided to use that, also thinking it would have a bit more flavor.  But, since I like to have it all, I also added just a bit (a quarter cup or so) of shredded fontina.

One recipe called for sherry and the other Marsala (which, I believe, is actually a kind of sherry).  I had both, but I chose sherry since I had a bigger bottle of that.

This is not a picture of OUR cheese soup. We didn’t think ours was worthy of a photograph.

We tasted the soup.  It was really bland. We added a little salt, a little more sherry, and a dash of Worcestershire.

We tasted the soup. It was still bland.  We added a little more salt.

Do you know where this is going?

In the end, it was too salty but still bland.  Before that night I didn’t realize that was possible. But it is.

I’m actually kind of mad that I wasted 8 cups of homemade chicken stock on that lame soup.

Anybody have a really good cheese soup recipe to share with me?