The art of pairing (well) wines and cheeses

The art of pairing (well) wines and cheeses

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We have just taken off our witches, ghosts and vampires costumes and we are already thinking about the next celebration, Christmas.

In a little more than a month and a half, we will be eating nougat and inviting our family and friends to lunches and dinners at home, where we do not want to miss the conversations that are being held in the living room while we are ‘slaves’ in the kitchen, preparing delicious food with which to entertain our guests.

In order not to suffer too much in the kitchen and to look like a perfect host, cheese boards were invented, but… be careful! We must be very careful if we want to add accompaniments and even more if we want to serve it with a wine pairing.

Let’s review some of our favorite pairings.

 

Soft cheeses with moldy rind

Although historically cheeses have been accompanied with red wines, many cheeses pair much better with white wines, as would be the case of Brie and Camembert, soft cheeses but with enough personality to be accompanied by aged white wines or even a cava or champagne, whose subtle acidity and sparkling bubbles help us to cleanse the mouth of the lactic creaminess of the cheese.

And if you opt for something different to surprise your guests with, we suggest you to accompany them with our Villazo, a different blend of Muscatel of Alexandria, Pedro Ximenez and Doradilla, with a lot of freshness in the mouth and a good acidity, perfect to accompany these cheeses.

 

Blue cheeses

Cabrales, Roquefort, Gorgonzola, Stilton… Each country has one or several types of blue cheese which, a priori, can be complex when choosing a pairing.

In this case, the ideal wines will be the sweet or fortified ones, since the resulting contrast is surprising. 

It is not for nothing that Port wine was ‘invented’ to accompany the English Stilton…

Although if you can’t stand the extreme sweetness, you can try them with our Secuencial, a 100% Muscatel of Alexandria dry style.

Cooked paste cheeses

Cooked paste cheeses, such as Cheddar, Gruyère, Appenzeller... are cheeses that can even be found with a certain degree of ripening that will give them different aromatic characteristics.

For unripened cooked cheeses, the easiest to find in our country, we recommend our Ingénito, a 100% Grenache with a fresh and Mediterranean style, which will help us to refresh our mouth after a bite of these cheeses.

As for this more mature style of cheese, we suggest pairing them with strong and intense reds with barrel aging.

Cured, and even smoked, Manchego type cheese

These are ‘powerful’ cheeses, intense, even spicy due to their degree of curing. They are cheeses that can take over any pairing ‘eating’ completely the wine that accompanies them. For this reason, it is necessary to resort to wines with sufficient entity and strength, such as red wines with medium intensity aging.

In the case of having this type of cheese but ‘young’ with practically no curing, it is recommended to opt for wines with a somewhat higher degree of acidity, and we can even opt again for cavas, champagnes and even our Villazo.

 

Parmesan, Pecorino or Grana Padano

If we like strong cheeses, these Italian representatives cannot be missing in our cheese board. For their pairing, we will look for wines of Italian origin, such as Barolo, Nebbiolo or even Sangiovese, to compensate the aromatic intensity of these cheeses, or our Ingénito whose Grenache cheeses go well with everything.

Although if we want to opt for local wines, you should dare with some Palo Cortado from Jerez.

 

Fresh goat / sheep cheeses

Fresh cheeses are soft, delicate and with a medium aromatic intensity, whose pairing we must take great care not to break their magic.

We recommend pairing them with young and aromatic white wines, such as a Verdejo or a Gewurztraminer and even our Secuencial in order to enhance the clear aromas of a fresh cheese.

Cheese fondue

Want to take it up a notch? Make the central element of your cheese board a cheese fondue.

This dish stands out for its fatty sensation in the mouth, beyond the elements with which we accompany the fondue, so we will opt for wines of intense to medium acidity, which help us to clean the mouth. Have we already told you about our Secuencial?

 

We hope that with these small brushstrokes, you will succeed this Christmas and we remind you that, if you dare to make a complete cheese board that includes several varieties, you can find our Pack Descubrimiento in our online store, which includes each of our references.

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