David Harker, owner of Newcastle Wine School, shares his advice on the perfect cheese and wine pairings
Some couples come and go – do you remember melon and ham, grapefruit topped with a glacé cherry, The Cheeky Girls..? Others stand the test of time like fish and chips, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, and Ant and Dec.
Cheese and wine, like love and marriage, is an institute you can’t disparage and as the song says, “you can’t have one without the other.”
Cheese and wine workshops are by far our most popular evenings at Newcastle Wine School, and there is great skill in matching the right wine with the right cheese.
Having sampled lots of both, I can confidently say some cheeses are better enjoyed with beer, and red wine is rarely the perfect partner for any cheese.
As the old saying goes, there’s a reason a wine merchant buys on apple and sells on cheese – the apple refreshes and sharpens the palate while certain cheeses have a knack of obscuring elements of wine.
The key to enjoying the best pairings is to understand the basic principles of food and wine matching.
When we eat, we experience up to five tastes – sugar, salt, sour, bitter and umami. Then there are the textural elements such as fat and the sensation of spice. In wine we have fruit, acid, sweetness, tannin, alcohol and body. Successful food and wine pairing depends on matching the dominant food element with the dominant wine element.
A salty dish, for example, will lower our perception of acid in wine. If we want to retain the wine’s fresh, fruity character we need to pair salty food with a wine that is high in acid – goat’s cheese and Sauvignon Blanc for instance.
A fatty cheese with a powerful flavour will crush a light-bodied, lightly flavoured wine – so choose a full-bodied, full-flavoured wine.
One of my favourite cheese and wine pairings is Stilton with English sparkling wine. It’s not an obvious pairing at first, but it is consistent with the principles. The cheese isn’t so strongly flavoured that it dominates the wine, while the wine has sufficient body and ample acidity to cope with the cream of the cheese. The yeasty character of the wine also complements the blue vein of protein in the cheese.
An appealing cheeseboard offers variety of flavours (fresh to strong), textures (soft to hard) and even shapes, sizes and colours to please the eye as well as the taste buds. With the choice that comes from three main milk types and eight distinct production methods, there are plenty of options.
Remember that cheese is also a seasonal product. Spring is the time to enjoy fresh cheeses such as Brie, Beaufort or chèvre when they are at their floral, herbal best and full of the flavours of the spring flowers and green shoots upon which the animals graze.
When it comes to sourcing cheese, a knowledgeable retailer is a must. Independent cheesemonger grate on Jesmond Road, Newcastle is excellent. Alternatively, award-winning wine merchants Carruthers & Kent, Gosforth offer a small but carefully curated cheese selection – try the Rauch Möndli, a creamy young Swiss cheese smoked over beech wood with a rose scented, smoky Gewürztraminer from Alsace. Meanwhile, Matthews in the corner of Newcastle’s Grainger Market is a North East institution.
Finally, should you serve the cheese before or after dessert? I subscribe to the French view that sweet follows salty, so I prefer the cheese before dessert. This also means I can continue with the wines served earlier in the meal, then finish the night with a sobering coffee. The English convention of cheese after dessert acknowledges that the traditional after-dinner port pairs perfectly with English cheese – the strong, sweet wine an ideal foil to sharp, salty cheese.
One final piece of advice – experiment and enjoy!
The wine list
Here are five suggestions for an attractive cheeseboard, each cheese paired with an appropriate wine selection:
They say, what grows together goes together, and the Loire Valley is home to great goat’s cheese and wonderful white wines. Fresh, soft, creamy Bouchon de Sancerre paired with a glass of lively Sancerre is a classic combination which is traditionally enjoyed by the region’s winegrowers as a snack during harvest. Alternatively, keep it local with a semi-hard goat’s cheese from Northumberland and match with an English white wine from the Bacchus grape.
Chaource is a mild, soft, bloomy rind cheese from the Champagne region – try it with the sparkling acidity and ripe, red fruit flavours of rosé Champagne.
Comté, a member of the Gruyere family of cheeses, is a pressed, cooked cheese from Eastern France. It is delicious with the local Jura white wine, and mild enough to enjoy with any red.
Aged Farmhouse Red Leicester has a big kick that works well with full-flavoured, aged, dry Oloroso Sherry.
Finally, salty Roquefort – the blue-veined ewes milk cheese from south west France – is a cracking contrast to a red Vin Doux Naturel from the same part of the world.
David Harker’s journey in wine has seen him progress from complete novice to a Wine & Spirit Education Trust Diploma-certified wine educator, accredited Bordeaux and Sherry wine educator, Spanish Wine Scholar and – in a We Bought a Zoo moment – wine school owner. To explore Newcastle Wine School’s events, tastings and courses visit www.localwineschool.com/newcastle
