Wine goes well with lots of food. I often refer to wine not as a drink but as the liquid part of a meal.
But no food seems to go better with wine than cheese.
I am not sure what is behind the affinity. Perhaps because they are both fermented products, using yeast and bacteria to transform milk and grapes.
Perhaps because they are both associated with terroir – the belief that things taste of
where they come from. Perhaps because France excels at both and they conjure up the perfect image of living well in the countryside.
For the last few years I have been accompanying tastings at my winery with a selection of artisanal cheeses.
I think it has really improved the experience for my visitors and also allowed me to show off my wines in a better way than if they were just tasted on their own.
When people taste wine with no food, they often struggle to imagine what the wine would be like over dinner or with food.
They tend to prefer the smoothest, easiest-to-drink wines and do not really appreciate the qualities of the wines that I (and professional wine critics) consider to be my best.
I think this is true for all wine-producers, not just me.
Qualities such as tannin, acidity, minerality and subtlety all require food to appreciate fully. They do not lend themselves to just quaffing.
It would be lovely to prepare a series of tasting dishes to perfectly match each wine but that would require hours of preparation and precise timing.
It would also require visitors not to be faddy or have any allergies. Cheese provides a simple, varied and convenient way to enhance a wine-tasting with food.
However, not all cheese increases the enjoyment of wine. The kind of cheese we used to see at 1970s British cheese-and-wine parties is not ideal.
Cubes of industrial Cheddar, Edam and Danish blue, stuck on a toothpick with a chunk of pineapple, an olive or a pickled onion is not the way to go!
Quality French cheeses
Fortunately, France has protected its wonderful range of regional cheeses better than most other European countries.
In fact the Appellation d’origine contrôlée system, known today for wine, was first introduced to protect and promote regional cheeses.
Each region of France has its own cheeses, made from the milk of particular races of goats, sheep and cows, fed on its particular grass, milked at a particular time of year, made using traditional local recipes, aged and packaged in distinctive and often unique ways.
Even though I’m sure there are schools that teach future sommeliers which particular cheese to serve with each and every French wine, I have found that there are no fixed rules and that experimentation is part of the fun.
However, I have learned one rule of thumb. That is to match lighter coloured cheese with white wines and darker coloured ones with red.
I am sure there are exceptions but by and large this simple method works well.
Now I would like to look in more detail about matching wines with cheeses.
The whitest cheeses in France are those made from goats’ milk. Le chèvre can come in many styles. The most important being how old the cheese is.
A freshly made goat’s cheese is really a fromage frais with almost no taste of goat. I would always advise people to seek out artisanal cheese from a local producer but Le Petit Billy is a reasonable replacement.
These go well with fresh, fruity white wines such as Muscat Sec and wines of the Loire Valley.
Medium aged chèvre, including Tomme de Chèvre, need white wines with a bit more body such as those from Alsace, Graves or the Rhône.
Aged goats cheese, like Rocamadour and Crottin de Chavignol, are much more powerful in flavour and go better with sweet white wines.
Mix, match and learn
You should not be afraid to experiment though. There are dozens of different cheeses made from goats’ milk.
Matching chèvre with white wines is perhaps the most rewarding of all cheese-and-wine pairing. Also try Bleu de Chèvre with a light red wine.
The creamy cows-milk cheeses of Northern France, especially the wonderful Brie de Meaux, are a lovely match for richer, more complex white wines such as Burgundy and those from the Languedoc and Roussillon.
They can equally be paired with rosé and lighter reds. Light reds, which I class as everything from Beaujolais, most Burgundy, the Loire and also the new-wave early-drinking reds from the Languedoc-Roussillon, can be matched with a large range of mild cheeses, both soft and hard.
I particularly enjoy matching fragrant reds with cheeses that smell of the farmyard.
With medium bodied reds like Bordeaux, Côtes du Rhône and those of the south-west, you have a lot of choice in terms of cheese.
An aged, runny Saint-Marcellin or Saint-Félicien from cow’s milk in the Rhone valley; an Ossau-Iraty from sheep’s milk in the Midi-Pyrénées; Tomme des Pyrénées or Tomme de Savoie from cows grazed on mountain pastures.
All of these make a great match but do not be afraid to try mild blue cheese like Fourme d’Ambert or stinky Epoisses de Bourgogne too.
For the big reds of the Northern Rhône and Languedoc-Roussillon I tend to go with those aged hard cows’ milk cheeses like Comté, Cantal and Beaufort but my favourite is one called Tomme aux Fleurs which is a rich, fruity Tomme rolled in dried flowers whose flavours permeate the cheese.
Most blue cheeses are best suited to sweet wines because their sharp, salty flavours tend to overwhelm dry wines.
Do not forget that the rind of French cheese is meant to be eaten along with the inside.
It adds to the flavour and texture of the cheese. It is not made from wax like Dutch cheese!
As with choosing wine, you will find the best cheeses in a specialist cheese shop or market stall. If you must buy from the supermarket, choose those from the counter, not the pre-packaged industrial cheese from the fridges.
Finally, I would suggest making a cheese-and-wine tasting the main event.
Do not leave it for after the main course to finish off a bottle when you are already full. It can form the basis of an excellent lunch or early dinner, perhaps combined with some salad, fruit, bread and charcuterie.
It is the perfect thing to organise with some friends so that you can taste a range of wines and cheeses together and discuss the best combinations.
Jonathan Hesford has a Postgraduate Diploma in Viticulture and Oenology from
Lincoln University, New Zealand and is the owner, vigneron and winemaker of
Domaine Treloar in the Roussillon – visit www.domainetreloar.com
