Michaels Grapevine

I recently did a tutored tasting and talk at the Living North Fair at Gosforth Park Racecourse in Newcastle.

I was asked to match wines with cheeses from the Northumberland Cheese Company.   This kind of exercise is good for me because it gets the old brain cells kicked into action!

Often people presume that only red wine goes with cheese.  This is a fallacy.  Sometimes red wine can be the worst thing with which to match a cheese.

For instance, the Northumberland Cheese Company produce a super goats cheese called Elsdon.  I paired this with our South African Sauvignon Blanc from Porter Mill – and it went fantastically.  Well, think about it for a moment.  All those famous goats and ewes milk cheeses of the Loire and Sancerre in France?  They’re not there by accident.  They go superbly with those regions’ Sauvignon Blanc based wines.  As the saying goes, ‘what grows together, goes together’.  The Porter Mill, although a New World Sauvignon, is in an old world style.  It’s no great surprise that it goes well with cheese!

Another matching I was particularly pleased with was a Jersey Cows’ Milk Cheese called Chevington.  This is a semi-hard cheese with a good tangy flavour.  I matched this with our Moulin de Gassac Chardonnay from the Languedoc.  Its crisp, fruity flavours with a hint of minerality stood up to the tanginess of the cheese.

By giving a little thought to both the wine and the cheese you can enhance the experience.  Don’t just assume, if it’s cheese, it must be red wine.

Of course, there are classic pairings such as Port and Stilton, and mature red Bordeaux with a nice crumbly Cheshire cheese.  But it can be fun to be daring and not go for the obvious choice.

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