Cheese & Wine Pairing Results
Our panel’s report on four cheese and wine pairings.
Second in a series of two articles on pairing cheeses with wine.
Please refer to our former article A Formal Cheese and Wine Pairing for a description of the four cheeses we reviewed and the method we used for scoring them.
HUMBOLDT FOG
We found no marriages made in heaven in any of the four wines we tried with this splendid soft-ripened goat cheese, but no negatives either. There were advocates for each of our four wines and the scoring was a +1 across the board. This seems to call into question the traditional wisdom of pairing delicate goat cheeses with crisp, dry whites such as Sauvignon Blanc (which was my personal favorite). Even the reds seemed to work well, although our panel preferred the lighter Beaujolais to the full-bodied Zinfandel. If any wine edged out the others, it was the Oloroso Sherry, which four tasters declared to be a marriage. One might expect that a strong, sweet wine like this would dominate the delicate flavors of the goat cheese. That might have been quite true if the goat cheese had been a Montrachet type (chalky, white, very delicate). But Humboldt Fog is a soft-ripened goat cheese that develops fairly aggressive flavors as it ripens. While the Sauvignon Blanc provided a splendid background against which the cheese shined in full glory, the Oloroso Sherry allowed both wine and cheese flavors to come together in new and exciting ways.
ROUGE ET NOIR CAMEMBERT (OLD STYLE)
No one on our panel found marriages between this wonderfully unctuous cheese and any of our four wines. The Sauvignon Blanc was acceptable; we agreed on a score of 0. The Beaujolias paired poorly (to our great surprise), two of us declaring it a disaster and only one person finding the combination pleasant. The majority of us rated the pairing a -1, agreeing that something was wrong with the combination. The Zinfandel, however, scored well, garnering an overall +1, the best score of any of our four wines. This finding seems to validate the traditional notion of matching strongly flavored cheeses with robust red wines.
UPLANDS PLEASANT RIDGE
We couldn't find any taster who didn't approve of every wine with this nutty farmstead cheese from Wisconsin. All but one of our twelve tasters loved it with the Sauvignon Blanc and rated the pairing +1, The Uplands Pleasant Ridge found a very good match with the Beaujolais, three of us declaring a marriage and almost all of the rest agreeing to at least a +1. The Zinfandel did almost as well, with a great majority rating it 0. It was clear that the lighter red allowed the flavors of the cheese to dominate, while the fuller bodied red overpowered a bit. The Oloroso Sherry worked very well also, with the majority of us awarding the pairing a +1.
SHROPSHIRE BLUE
This is truly one of the world's greatest cheeses and we found a perfect wine complement. Our opinions of this cheese with the Sauvignon Blanc were all over the map, ranging from marriages to "something went wrong." There were clearly issues of personal preference at play. Once again, the light red Beaujolais didn't have the stuffing to stand up to the overpowering flavors of this strong, Stilton-like cheese. The flavors didn't seem to clash, but the cheese dominated. The Zinfandel did very much better. We imagined a full-bodied Syrah or Cabernet Sauvignon might have worked as well. We were almost unanimous in awarding this pairing a +1. But the oohs and ahs were reserved for the Oloroso Sherry. The majority of us found this a perfect pairing-one in which the flavors of the cheese and the wine combine on the palate to produce new and more attractive flavors than either the cheese of the wine could deliver on their own.
THE MOST VERSATILE WINE FOR A CHEESE COURSE
If you were to serve a single wine with this particular selection of cheeses, then the Oloroso Sherry wins hands down. The New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc produced no negatives with any of these cheeses, while both reds were problematic with one cheese or another. An alternative which we didn't try, but would recommend as a good complement across the board would be a Blanc de Blancs or Brut Champagne.
