Wine and cheese matching

What springs to mind when you think of matching food and cheese? It’s probably “Port and Stilton” or “Sauternes and Roquefort” rather than "aged white Burgundy and cow’s milk cheese".

 I took part in an event run by Corney and Barrow held in Paxton and Whitfield’s shop on Jermyn Street in the heart of London. These are two very eminent businesses at the top of their respective fields of wine and cheese. The idea was to open our minds to the possibility of matching white wines and cheese.

It wasn’t a structured event where we were treated to a tutorial on what to look for in cheese and therefore which white wines would go with which style of cheese. Maybe it would have helped if the event had started with a bit of a tutorial. After all I’ve been taught as part of my WSET Diploma how to taste wine. Although I can taste cheese some direction about the nuances of texture, production methods, style etc may have helped. However there were a number of experts on hand to talk through the details as we tasted. And I did learn that tasting soft cheeses with wine is not a good idea as the cheese coats the mouth making it harder to appreciate the wine.

The wines, 12 in total, were organised by Corney and Barrow into three groups;

 • “crisp and fresh” including an Alsace pinot blanc and a champagne

• “classic” featuring a Sancerre and a Puligny Montrachet

• “quirky” with an Arinto and a Langhe Bianco Rossese

The cheeses were British, including Gorwydd Caerphilly and Harbourne Blue, or Continental European – a Serra de Estrela from Portugal and a Chevrotin des Aravis from the French Alps.

Although the cheeses were laid out alongside the wines we were encouraged to try any combination although 1 hour certainly wan’t enough to try the 84 possible combinations. Much as you would expect there were some combinations that worked and some that didn’t:

• The Puligny Montrachet les Referts 1er cru Olivier Leflaive 2007 and the Mahon, a pasteurised cow’s milk cheese made on Menorca was sublime bringing out the nuttiness in the wine. This wine and the Chevrotin did not work for me, the wine completely dominating any flavours from the cheese.

• A Chablis 1er les Lys Domaine Vincent Dampt 2008 brought out the fruit in the Caerphilly and was also a good match for the Mahon.

• The acidity in the Arinto Quinta de Chocapalha 2008 was a perfect match for the sharpness of the Harbourne Blue. With a Camembert the wine initially dominated the cheese, the flavours from which eventually came through.

Just as there are wines that I love and other people do not, and vice versa, some of the success of matching wine with cheese is down to individual taste. However I’d encourage anyone to think beyond “port and stilton” next time you want to have cheese with your dinner.

 

 

Try having a couple of different white wines open and experimenting. I think you will be pleasantly surprised.