First of all, tasting. You are looking to taste a bit of cheese first to coat your palate. Wash it down with a sip of wine, then repeat. Too much cheese or too much wine, and you might miss some detail, so keep the portions/swigs small!

If you are fortunate enough to have a number of wines to pair with a number of cheeses, we generally let the cheeses lead. (ie you may go from white, to red) That it because, leading with the wines may mean powerful cheeses preceding more delicate ones, which will blow your palate.

How can you tell if a pairing is good?

Well clearly the best answer here is whether you enjoy it or not. But the hallmark of a clash is when you will be left with a taste of alcohol/ethanol.

Also not ideal is where you lose the identity of the cheese entirely, or the wine of course. We are really looking for a balanced flavour, maintaining the identity of both components.

The real jackpot, and what we always look for at cheesegeek, is elevation. Where the cheese and wine together produce new flavours, or accentuate existing flavours.

(Science alert – I’m about to get geeky)

First of all, the tannins in wine can often clash with the acidity in cheese. This can lead you to imbalanced pairings that fail to showcase the quality of each product.

White wine doesn’t have this issue, because the skins of the grape contain tannins, whereas white wine doesn’t.

Specifically in the case of Chardonnay, the grape is one of the few that benefits from Malolactic Fermentation (MLF) where malic acid (sharp apple flavour) within the wine is converted to lactic acid (creamy, buttery, rounded). This is why Chardonnay classically carries those rounder more ‘dairy’ like characteristics like buttery and creamy. When you think the maturation of cheese involves lactose converting to lactic acid, you have two parallel processes, both creating lactic acid, and therefore complimentary flavour profiles.

So, scientifically speaking, Chardonnay and cheese makes perfect sense!

Best of the reds

But many of you will ignore all of that and stick to your guns. I want red wine with my cheese. Fair enough. So, how do you pick your reds?

I tend to find red wines with slightly finer tannins (see tannins reference above) generally work better across a wider range of cheeses, particularly if you are choosing a single grape variety. So the best example here would be Pinot Noir, which is a real all rounder when it comes to cheese.

Gamay is another (famously used in Beaujolais) that works really well with cheese, and its inherent fruitiness is perfect foil for rich, salty, creamy cheese.

If you wanted to focus on robust, powerful cheeses, like aged Gouda or a lip smacking cheddar, then Shiraz works very nicely. The tannins are more forward, and there is a spicy robust body to the wine that holds up really well against the complexity of these cheese.

In terms of fortified wines, or port, there is no doubt that port and stilton works very nicely, but it can get a little rich and cloying if you’re not careful. Historically we have found that a big red tends to work better.

About Yhangry X CheeseGeek

To find some pairings of your own, Cheesegeek and Yhangry have launched a cheese & wine pairing menu, exclusively on Yhangry. You’ll be given some of Cheesegeek’s favourite seasonal cheeses and taken through a wine pairing by Isabelle, the Sommelier. The goal is having fun and making your own approach to cheese and wine pairings. You can find the menu here, book now for an evening to impress.