Martin Johnson/The Joys of Cheese November: The Pairing Strategist

 

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            A few Sundays ago, I was at working at The Bedford Cheese Shop, when a telling encounter occurred.  A woman came in and asked what cheeses we had from <state><place>Provence</place></state>.  Now, the shop carries cheeses from all over <country-region><place>France</place></country-region>, but <state><place>Provence</place></state>, that stumped us.

            We asked why, and she reached into a bag pulled out a bottle of a big red wine made in <state><place>Provence</place></state>.  Immediately my coworkers and I began suggesting an array of cheeses—mostly from <country-region><place>Switzerland</place></country-region> and <country-region><place>Italy</place></country-region>--that would complement her wine but she cut us off and at a volume that made us all wonder if she’d consumed one too many Bloody Marys over brunch, she announced “No, I want to taste the land!”

            One of my coworkers with a wry sense of humor offered her a taste of Persille Des Tignes, a firm, earthy (hey, she wanted to taste the land) goat’s milk cheese from the <place><placename>Rhone</placename><placetype>Valley</placetype></place>. 

            The woman adored the cheese.  It was perfect for her wine.  We assured her that Tignes was close to <state><place>Provence</place></state> (which it is in the very general way that <state><place>Virginia</place></state> can be said to be close to <state><place>Florida</place></state>), and she went away happy.

            The real punch line was that she was following a flawed strategy in pairing her wine and cheese.  While they undoubtedly make some great cheese in Provence, what’s mostly available for export are soft goat cheeses that are—big surprise here—rubbed in the fresh herbs that are Provence’s culinary calling card.  These cheeses would wilt under the force of a full bodied red wine.  Rather than a blend of flavors that highlight the strong points of each, you would only taste the wine and a clump of some foodstuff.

            Pairing wine and cheese has long vexed even the most astute enthusiasts of each.  In fact, last October, Financial Times wine columnist Jancis Robinson grew so frustrated with trying to match cheeses with red wines that she suggested people give up the quest and only pair cheese with whites. 

            For years, there were two dominant philosophies about pairing wines and cheese and both have been discredited lately.  The first philosophy held that you needed to pair cheeses and wine from the same region.  There’s no guarantee that cheeses and wines from the same region will work (for instance, Marsolino and Chianti come from the same part of Tuscany but their qualities are more overlapping than complementary) and there are plenty of cheeses and wines from disparate regions, Oregonian Pinot Noir and Piedmont Tomas that tend to work very well together.

            The other approach held that cheeses and wines of comparable intensity should be paired.  The appeal of this is obvious in the case of say a rose and say, a medium bodied Spanish goat’s milk cheese like <city><place>Pau</place></city>, it works beautifully.  However, it’s as likely to not work as it is to work.  For instance, consider the match of a big intense Barbera and an aggressive spiky Roquefort.  Instead of a sweet blend, your palette will more likely feel like a war of the worlds is going inside your mouth. 

            There is a new approach called balance.  It was introduced by Max McCalman in his fine book, Cheese: A Connoisseur’s Guide to the World’s Best balance. In other words a strong cheese should be balanced by a sweet wine.  A big tannic red should be balanced by something creamy or earthy (hence the Persille Des Tignes and that woman’s robust Provencal red). 

            Autumn is a time of sweeter whites like Chenin Blancs and fruitier reds, most notably <place>Beaujolais</place> but many others.  How do you find the right cheeses to pair with them?

            This is a great time of year for blue cheeses, especially classic ones like Stilton, which goes great with Port and other sweet wines and lately some amazing makes of the classic French blue, Roquefort, have been trickling onto the market.  If you are lucky, your local cheese merchant will carry one of the following brands, Papillon, Vieux Berger, or Herve Mons.  These are roqueforts so good that you could just slather them onto a baguette, open a bottle of Chenin Blanc or Riesling and forget all your troubles. 

            Drier wines benefit from complex cheeses.  While you probably think of Parmesan as a topping for pasta, it’s much more than that.  There are many varieties of “Parmesan” but the best is Parmigiano Reggiano, which is made by a select handful of families in <city><place>Parma</place></city>.  There’s absolutely nothing wrong with putting it on pasta (I do it all the time, in fact, some flavored fettuccine, sautéed portabello mushrooms, and grated Reggiano is one of my go-to quick and easy dishes), but Parmigiano Reggiano is a great table cheese and it’s a fine complement for drier wines.  Reggiano has a nice pineapple-like sweetness in the middle of its flavor (yes great cheeses are like great stories, they have beginnings, middles, and ends). 

If you have the opportunity to see the wheel of Parmigianno that you’re buying look for the date.  In <country-region><place>America</place></country-region>, we tend to eat older more abrupt Reggiano, with vintages reaching five years old.  In <country-region><place>Italy</place></country-region> they favor younger Reggianos, sometimes a mere eighteen months old.  These younger varieties are more buttery and multifaceted in their flavor.

            My top choices for flamboyant red wine like Pinot Noirs or Amarones are alpine cheeses like Comte and Gruyere These are classics made in the same region, the Jura Mountains in Eastern France and Western Switzerland respectively and both are renown for their dense, nutty flavor.  The very best Comte comes from an affineur (a master at ageing cheeses) named Marcel Petit and the very best Gruyere comes from a brilliant man named Rolf Beeler.  Beeler is so well regarded in the cheese world that he has groupies.  His Gruyere is so dense; it’s almost chocolate-y.  

Another excellent wine pairing with big red wines this time of year is Vacherin Mont D’Or, which is also made on both sides of the border. It’s a classic, rich, decadent cheese full of fungal goodness.  Vacherin is only available from mid November until mid February, and I get the idea that’s for our own good.