Wine and cheese seem such a natural pairing the words even sound like they belong together, like Abbott and Costello, Seals and Croft, or Mary-Kate and Ashley. Yet any good partnership needs plenty of work to hold together–just look what happened to Martin and Lewis, Sonny and Cher or even J.Lo and Ben.
So it is with wine and cheese. You’ve got to do some thinking to get it really right.
There are no sweeping dictums like “red with beef, white with fish” to guide a consumer faced with an ever-expanding number of pairing choices. Wine and cheese experts alike will tell you that the successful match depends on the particular cheese, the available wine and personal taste.
Still, there are some guidelines you can consider.
Don’t diss whites
“People always think of red wines, and many white wines work better,” said Matt Parker of The Cheese Stands Alone, a Lincoln Square shop. “The high notes of the white wines can cut through the butteriness of the cheeses.”
Parker likes gewurztraminer, which he calls one of cheese’s best friends. “You can pair almost anything with that wine,” he said.
Mike Baker of Chicago’s Wine Discount Center votes for a chenin blanc because it “works with so many kinds of cheese: young, mature, subtle, sweet.” French Vouvraysare his favorite chenin blancs.
“They have this musty, earthy flavor to them, which one could mistake as being corked,” Baker said. “There might be something to that that lends itself to cheese.”
Yet don’t forget reds
Shebnem Ince, general manager of Que Syrah Fine Wines in Chicago, likes a syrah with an assortment of mild triple-cream cheeses or lambrusco with a hard cheese like Parmesan.
Baker votes for lighter-style reds with little or no tannin, lots of fruit and some acidity. A simple sangiovese from Italy, a tempranillo from Spain or a pinot noir not aged with a lot of wood would work, he said.
Parker drinks lots of red wine and loves a “big” zinfandel with a Swiss cheese like Vacherin Fribourgeois.
Experiment
Champagne and Cheddar? Sounds weird, but Parker finds bubbly goes beautifully with a 4-year-old Grafton Village white Cheddar.
Ince is another proponent of experimentation. She once served a grilled cheese sandwich with chasselas, a white wine popular in Switzerland, because she figured grilled cheese was basically fondue caught between two slices of bread. But she warns consumers to expect a few disappointments in making matches. Even the pros encounter “a real stinker” at times, she said.
“You’ve got to put the two things in the mouth together,” Ince said.
To lessen the risk, Ince recommends serving a selection of half-sized bottles of different wines with an assortment of cheese rather than be wedded to one full bottle.
Remember the classics
Sure, there are a lot of wines and cheeses out there, but men and women have for centuries been putting them together. Try some of the traditional matches as enumerated by Ray Denton, wine manager of Binny’s Ivanhoe Castle in Chicago. Pair aged Cheddar with cabernet sauvignon, acidic whites with goat cheeses, sweet dessert wines with blue cheese, he said.
“Generally speaking, more full-bodied flavors demand full-bodied wines,” said Sofia Solomon, president of Tekla Inc., cheese importers and distributor of gourmet food products.
Consider birthplace
“I usually go with a wine that comes from the same area as the cheese or the cheese dish does,” said Marlena Spieler, a food writer and cookbook author whose latest book, “Grilled Cheese: 50 Recipes to Make You Melt,” is to be released this fall.
“I know this is the easy way out but it’s so reliable,” the California-born Spieler wrote in an e-mail from England, where she lives and works. “I mean, a flinty Sancerre with the lovely chalky goat cheeses of the Loire. Mmmm. They just taste made for each other, which they were. Grown up together. And Swiss wines with Swiss cheeses: divine.”
Talk to the pros
Visit your local wine shop or cheesemonger, or talk to the sommelier or chef of your favorite restaurant about suggestions for food and wine pairings.
Spieler, for example, might bring a selection of cheeses to a wine seller she admires and ask him or her to taste the cheese alongside some wine.
– – –
And Cheddar goes with …
For this informal blind tasting, the Good Eating panel was asked to try eight whites, four reds and one sparkling wine with three different cheeses and determine which wines worked best with each. Joining the panel was Shebnem Ince of Que Syrah Fine Wines in Chicago.
We chose triple-cream, Cheddar and goat to represent three broad classes of cheese available in most supermarkets. From California’s Cow Girl Creamery came Mount Tam, a triple-cream cheese. From Wisconsin, there was a mild Colby-style Cheddar. And from Capriole in Greenville, Ind., there was fresh goat cheese. We’ll do a tasting with blue cheeses when the weather gets colder. Here are the tasters’ top three wine choices for the three cheeses.
GOAT CHEESE
1. 2001 Paul Jaboulet Aine Muscat de Beaumes-de-Venise Dessert wine with goat cheese? You bet. The French wine’s honeyed sweetness contrasted well with the tart, almost acerbic cheese. “A lovehate relationship that works for me,” one taster wrote. “A union of loveliness in the mouth,” Ince declared. $15/350 ml
2. 2002 Henry Natter Sancerre This French sauvignon blanc was “the perfect match,” declared a panelist, who loved the contrast of the crisp wine’s “flinty flavor” and the plushness of the cheese. Ince felt the wine helped the tangy goat cheese “cream out.” $19 3. 2003 Ferrari-Carano Fume Blanc Another sauvignon blanc, this from California’s Sonoma County, the wine’s “bland sweetness” was a “nice foil” to the pert cheese, according to one panelist. $13
CHEDDAR
1. 2002 Liberty School Cabernet Sauvignon The sturdy fruitiness of this California red worked well with the “straight-ahead” Cheddar, one panelist thought. Yet a doubter believed the pairing was OK; “nothing hairraising, but also not especially adventurous.” $15
2. 2002 Jewel Pinot Noir This California red helped the “mellow” Cheddar grow a little bolder, according to one panelist. But another taster thought the pinot made the Cheddar taste creamier. $9
3. 2002 DuBaril Chasselas Romand The Swiss wine and Wisconsin cheese were both mild and worked efficiently together. One taster felt the two were refreshing and avoided a “flabbiness” found with the red pairings. $14
— B.D.
Sources: Other wines paired with cheeses for this tasting were: 2002 Lois Gruner Veltliner ($10); 2003 Dry Creek Vineyard Chenin Blanc Clarksburg ($8); 2002 Domaine Bourillon-D’Orleans Vouvray La Bourdonnerie ($12); 2002 Henry Natter Sancerre; 2001 Albert Mann Gewurztraminer Cru Furstentum ($26); 2000 Schramsberg blanc de blancs ($26); 2002 Shenandoah Vineyards Zinfandel Amador County ($7.99); 2001 Terragens Romio Sangiovese di Romagna ($8). We found these wines at Kafka Wine Co., Binny’s Ivanhoe Castle, Que Syrah Fine Wines, Sam’s Wines & Spirits and Whole Foods. Not every wine may be in stock at your local stores; call ahead to avoid disappointment. Prices are rounded off and may vary from store to store.
