Pairing Tip : Sweet And Fruity Wines Deserve Sweet And Fruity Cheeses
Choose cheese that compliments the flavors of your wine. Some wines might have subtle hints of a certain fruit essence while other wines actually have added fruit juice! Amplify those characteristics with a similarly flavored cheese. Just like wine, cheese can have a complex profile that includes notes of sweet berries, honey, or even dried fruit!
Perfect Wine & Food Pairings
Whether youre hosting an intimate dinner party or a large gathering with all of your friends, a meat and cheese board is the perfect party appetizer. Its easy to make, easy for guests to serve themselves, endlessly customizable, and not to mention, totally delicious. Want to make the best-ever board for your party? Weve got expert tips to help your meat and cheese spread come together perfectly.
All-in-One Gifts
A charcuterie spread is so versatileit can serve as a tasty party snack, hearty addition to a main course, or even as a light and flavorful meal on its own. But no matter how youre enjoying your favorite selection of meats and cheeses, one things for sure: a glass of wine can really take the flavors of your bites to the next level. But which wine should you choose? Our guide to wine pairings can help you pick the perfect pour based on your preferred flavor profile.
Bold
Not shy about full-bodied flavors? Then our Generosity Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon is a great choice. This wine pairs nicely with our bolder-tasting meats, cheeses, and condiments because the cabernets full body really brings out the complexity of stronger flavors.
Also Check: What Wine Has The Lowest Calories
Pairing Wine With Summer Fruits And Vegetables
Joy! Summer produce begins to fill the bins in grocery stores and farmers markets stalls at last!
At Kendall-Jackson, the Farm-to-Table Dinner Series starts soon, with its diverse array of local ingredients that are used to highlight the Jackson familys California wines. Theres no better time than the summer to work on loving our veggies and fruits as so many of them blossom into their peak seasons over the next few months.
Whats one of the best parts of this summer eating mindset? Wine is made from fruit, too, so there is absolutely a place on the table for fermented juice!
The rise in plant-based diets is another good reason to investigate vegetable pairings with wine and fruit pairings with wine. Whether we or our family members or friends are eating vegetarian or vegan or even if were still accompanying our sides with poultry and meat, fruit and vegetables are occupying more and more real estate on our plates.
If roughage comprises more of our intake, we should think more about how those elements pair with the wines in our glasses. Maybe the sides are as important as the mains? Or, are the sides now the mains?
Don’t Miss: Is Wine Bad For Kidney Stones
Best Cheese For A Cheese Board
When deciding what to include on my fruit and cheese board, I like to think about taste, texture, and appearance and let that be my guide.
Offering a variety of types of cheese from different milk sources is also a good idea: cow, goat, and sheep cheeses all have different tastes and textures. That being said be sure to serve at least one cheese that most people will recognize and be comfortable with. Plan on 2 ounces of cheese per person.
I try to choose three different cheeses, since odd numbers tend to be the most visually appealing, and go for something wedge-shaped, something circular, and something cubed or sliced so there is nice visual variety. Another way of thinking about it is to aim for a soft cheese, a hard cheese, and a crumbly cheese.
For the board in these pictures, I chose a spreadable Boursin garlic & herb cheese, a sweet, soft brie, and a classic sharp cheddar cut into cubes.
Many grocery stores have specialty cheese sections right next to the deli, which is where you want to go to pick out the cheeses for your cheese board. At some places, you can even sample cheeses and a cheesemonger can help you pick out a good variety if you feel stumped or overwhelmed.
I will say that I dont get too ambitious with my cheese choices since I dont love super intense cheeses . So all of the cheese listed below are going to be pretty safe choices for most people.
The Serious Eats Cheese And Wine Pairing Cheat Sheet
It’s New Year’s Eve, and your guests are about to come tumbling in. You set out bowls of salty snacks and a grand platter of cheeses. There’s creamy white chèvre, a Stilton, some Brie, nutty aged Gruyère, tangy Vermont cheddar, and a splurge-worthy chunk of 4-year Gouda. With a flourish you top the platter with fruits and nuts just as the doorbell rings.
It’s time to start popping corks. There’s Champagne, of course, and let’s seewhat else? What wine goes best with all those cheeses?
The good news is that your guests will be thrilled no matter what you pour. The bad news is: it’s complicated. Pairing wine and cheese is harder than you’d think.
That’s because there isn’t just one kind of wine and one kind of cheese. Cheeses vary in moisture content, fat content, texture, flavor. Wines, too, vary in acidity, sweetness, body, and structure. Fortunately, a few basic guidelines will bring match-making success, and by midnight your cheese and wine will be arm and arm singing Auld Lang Syne.
Don’t Miss: How To Make A Pallet Wine Rack
Cheese Pizza & Chianti
Pizza night? Yep, there’s cheese on pizza too, and you want the perfect wine to pair with it! To find the perfect pairing, we reached out to Joseph Ciolli, CEO of Grimaldi’s Pizzeria, for his advice. He recommended a Rosso Toscano, a Tuscan red blend, which they also sell at the restaurant! The Mille Gradi is a red wine blended by the Grimaldi’s team at the Rocca del Macie estate in Chianti, and is available for 50% off any Grimaldi’s Pizzeria carryout food purchase!
“The balanced, supple, and fresh taste with ripe berries and oak spice is the perfect complement to the smoky coal-fired crust of Grimaldi’s Traditional pizza, even better when the pizza is topped with Italian sausage, meatballs, and pepperoni,” says Ciolli. Can’t get your hands on this bottle? Try a Tuscan red wine, like a Chianti.
Eat This, Not That!
Cheese Pairing House Rules
You May Like: How To Make Glasses Out Of Wine Bottles
What To Know When Pairing Wine And Cheese
- Pairing wines and cheeses from the same region is a good, safe place to start wine and cheese combinations. For example, a good Italian Chianti and a potent Parmesan will provide a fascinating mix.
- Remember that the harder types of cheese can handle more tannic wines. While creamy cheeses, such as Brie, typically pair better with wines that have more acidity, like a Chardonnay. Give salty cheeses a sweet wine partner .
Challenging Vegetable Wine Pairings
But, there are always ornery ones. Pairing wine with the artichoke and the asparagus are the top challenges in the veggie world. Both are high in umami and bitter elements, so they often insert an unpleasant contrast to the fruit-driven character of wine. That is especially the case when the wine has been aged with any new oak, which imparts notes of vanilla, caramel and torrefaction.
The good news is that these two difficult-for-wine foods work well with the same wines. Those wines are crisp and crunchy enough to cut through the food on the palate, provide a diversity of flavors, while a number of exotic and far-flung varieties can work, an unoaked, varietal Sauvignon Blanc is always a sure bet.
Also Check: How To Make Glasses Out Of Wine Bottles
Vermentino And Fiore Sardo
Why it works: A nutty sheeps cheese, Fiore Sardo does very well alongside the more oily texture of a Vermentino. The saline flavors of both make sure that each only enhances the other, with Vermentinos citrus notes adding a fruity acidity to the fatty character of a sheeps milk cheese like Fiore Sardo .
Also try:Soave and Mascarpone, Grechetto and Fromage Blanc, or Verdicchio and Requesón.
Protip: Consider Age And Intensity
All of cheese-dom lies along a continuum from fresh through hard-aged. Young fresh cheeses have a high water content and a milky and delicate texture. As a cheese ages, a process called affinage, the moisture in its body slowly evaporates, leaving behind fat and protein. Since fat and protein carry flavors, older cheeses tend to be more rich and savory.
In addition to drying and concentrating the cheese, age also introduces new flavors. Bloomy-rind cheeses like Brie remain gooey and spreadable, but have picked up earthy notes from a few months in the cave. Older cheeses like Gruyère and Emmental acquire nutty flavors. Blue cheeses develop pungency from the mold in their veins. Washed-rind cheeses like Époisses earn a funky, bacon-y redolence that you either love or hate.
Like cheeses, wines also run the gamut from delicate to bold, and their depth and complexity can correlate with their age, too. Young wines are fresh and spirited, with lively aromas and bright flavors of fruits, flowers, citrus, herbs, or spice. Wines that have spent time in cask or bottle have had a chance to knit together and acquire more nuance. In addition to their primary fruit flavors, they take on secondary notes of oak, toast, earth, oxidation, minerals, umami, and more. Like cheeses, these wines tend to be more complex and savory than their younger counterparts.
Read Also: What Wine Has The Lowest Calories
Pleasant Ridge Reserve & Pinot Noir
This specialty, award-winning Wisconsin farmstead cheese has aged 9-12 months and is absolutely divine with medium-bodied wines like pinot noir. However, Werlin says that this cheese can even pair well with the right white wines, like pinot blanc or Riesling. “The nutty, brown buttery and grassy flavors in the cheese marry well with aromatic fruity whites,” says Werlin, “Together, it makes you think of green pastures filled with spring flowers. Red wine takes the experience into fall or winter when those same characteristics in the cheese are made a bit earthier and savory because of the dark berry and forest-like characteristics in the wine.”
Figs And Smoked Gouda
This is a combination I discovered on my own just recently. Figs are one of my favorite snacks, so I always have some lying around. Last week, I bought some smoked gouda on a whim, and on another whim I tried eating these two together. It might have been the best idea I ever had! I was surprised at how well the mild fig flavor was able to tone down the slightly overwhelming smokiness of the cheese. Gouda also has a sourness to it that brings out the figs complexity. I definitely recommend trying these two together if you have a chance.
Read Also: Bohae Black Raspberry Wine Total Wine
Cheese And Wine Matching Suggestions In Brief:
- Hard cheeses like cheddar or Comté: White Burgundy, Nebbiolo, Pinot Noir, Rioja, red Bordeaux blend
- Soft cheese: Champagne, Chablis, Hunter Semillon, Beaujolais
- Blue cheese: Sauternes, Pedro Ximénez Sherry, Rutherglen Muscat
- Goat and sheep cheeses: Sancerre, Dry Riesling, Rhône varieties red and white , Fino Sherry
- Washed-rind cheeses: Rioja, red Burgundy, Alsace Pinot Gris, Gewurtztraminer
- All-rounders: Amontillado Sherry, tawny Port
Which Cheese To Pair With Your Favourite Wine
Most people like to pair red wine with cheese and thats fine – just bear in mind that there are some cheeses, as Ive suggested above, that taste better with a white wine or dessert wine so don’t be afraid to experiment.
10 popular wines and the cheeses to pair with them
1. Cabernet sauvignon, merlot and Bordeaux blends – cheddar, gouda and other hard cheeses
2. Pinot noir – brie and camembert
3. Rhône and other southern French reds – a good all-rounder with a French cheeseboard
4. Rioja – particularly good with sheep cheeses like Manchego
5. Chianti – parmigiano reggiano and pecorino
6. Port – blue cheeses like stilton
7. Sauvignon blanc – goat cheese and feta, cheeses with garlic and herbs
8. Chardonnay – buttery cheddar
9. Pinot Grigio – mozzarella and other mild Italian cheeses
10. Champagne and other sparkling wine – Vacherin Mont dor, Chaource
If you enjoyed this post download my cheese book 101 Great Ways to Enjoy Cheese and Wine for loads of other pairing ideas
Top photo ©George Dolgikh at fotolia.com
If you found this post useful and were happy to get the advice for free perhaps you’d think about donating towards the running costs of the site? You can find out how to do it here or to subscribe to our regular newsletter click here.
You may also enjoy
Read Also: Is Stella Rosa Wine Keto Friendly
Why Does Wine And Cheese Pairing Work
Winemaking and cheesemaking have flourished side-by-side for centuries, so its no surprise that this food and drink combination go so well together. Both often take years of aging to reach maturation and optimum flavor, both require careful tending by artisan producers, and both are often created in similar terroir.
Still, you could say that wine and cheese have a yin and yang kind of relationship going on. Cheese is fatty. Wine is sharp. Yet these opposites attract to create a magical coupling of flavor and texture. And it seems that scientists have discovered why these two are better together.
Blackberry Wine + Blue Cheese
If you look up wine pairings for blue cheese, youll find recommendations for dessert wines like sherry and port. Those are great, classic pairings! Blue cheese can be divisive, though: its one of those cheeses some people really love while other people steer clear of its sharp, zesty flavor. The same goes for dessert wines! Even some sweet wine drinkers can turn their noses to the category of dessert wine, thinking its just too sweet. Just give this pairing a chance! Oliver Blackberry Wine is not quite a dessert wine. While it can certainly be served with dessert, its fresh fruit quality and bright blackberry tartness balance its rich sweetness. This wine is a surprisingly delightful pairing with the distinct saltiness of blue cheese.
You May Like: Does Aldi Sell Alcohol
Cheese Board For Wine Tasting
Making a cheese board for wine tasting? Follow this simple, down-to-earth guide to start pairing cheese, charcuterie and other snacks with wine!
Ive made a lot of cheese boards for you guys. I know! I just love them so much. Styling them and photographing them, and eating them, of course.
But Ill never make the same cheese board twice. Im always looking for new and fun goodies to add to my boards, and new ways to pair the ingredients with beverages.
Burrata & Pinot Grigio
When it comes to a burrata, Werlin says “pair with light wines such as pinot grigio or Austrian wine, grüner veltliner. The latter is a mouthful but surprisingly easy to find these days.” She adds that “the light high-acid white wines cut through the rich, creamy, delicious cheese to create a perfect balance.” You could even enjoy a glass with this Mediterranean burrata plate!
Don’t Miss: Red Wine Out Of White Pants
Wine And Cheese Pairing
Some people love the holidays for the general feeling of joy and happiness in the air. Some people love the holidays for the magicand the music. And a lot of people love the holiday for the presents.;
Me, I do love all of those things as well, however another big reason I love the holidays, is for the entertaining. I throw my fair share of get togethers during the holidays, and while some are larger than others, the best get together of all is small, intimate, and includes lots of cheese and wine.;
Today were going to elevate your occasion with; and Tillamook Cheese this season to do just that throw a party with a wine and cheese pairing. I cant think of anything better.;
Today were going to talk about:
- How to throw an amazing happy hour for your friends
- The ideal wine and cheese pairing
- How to make the most perfect cheeseboard
- Tips and tricks to make entertaining easy and fun
- The simplest bacon and cheddar crostini that would be perfect at any holiday gathering
Dont Miss: Will You Be My Bridesmaid Wine
What Else Should I Include On A Cheese Board For Wine Tasting
Well, youre in luck, because I took a wine class in culinary school, and I still have my GIANT textbook.
It gave me lots of great ideas for snack and wine pairings for my wine and cheese board, including:
- strawberries pair with pinot noir
- chocolate chip cookies pair with syrah or cabernet sauvignon
- candied pecans or walnuts pair with riesling
- pepperoni pair with syrah
- sweet potato chips pair with moscato
- white chocolate pair with champagne
- prosciutto pair with pinot noir
- castelvetrano olives pair with sauvignon blanc
Read Also: Seven Sisters Wine