There are few cheeses more widely recognized by name, or tightly woven into our dining traditions, than English Stilton. With its velvety texture, sweet and mushroomy blue mold, and meaty sea salt finish, Stilton hits all the best flavor buttons. Our preferred Stilton comes to us from Colston Bassett Dairy, located within Nottinghamshire County, in the Midlands region of Central England. One of the smallest of just 6 dairies authorized to produce Stilton, and an operation that’s been going strong for over 100 years, Colston Bassett takes pride in its hands-on approach to quality and consistency. Much of their success can be traced to the fact that they’ve employed just 4 head cheesemakers throughout their entire cheesemaking history. A common pairing suggestion for Stilton might be Port wine, and while we don’t necessarily disagree, we’ve found something perhaps a little more fun for this time around. This sparkling Gamay Rosé, from Bernard Rondeau, made in the southernmost region of the Jura Mountains of France, is full of red summer fruit, gentile tannins and a balance of residual sugars and acid that fit perfectly with this sturdy cheese. A fully expressive pairing highlighting the wild streak of natural fermentation.
The Pairing Week 10: Big Cheese, Big Wine
A couple weeks back we highlighted a goat’s milk gouda from the famed, Fromagerie L’Amuse, in Amsterdam. This week we’re pairing another cheese aged in those same cellars, their 2 year Signature Gouda. Made with pasteurized cow’s milk, traditional rennet, and packed with a crystalline crunch that everyone craves, this cheese will certainly grab your attention. Combining a silky smooth paste with a boozy, salty brown butter finish, this cheese leaves your mouth watering. You’ll often hear us Cheesemongers pair this cheese with bottles of bourbon or scotch, but this time we’ve found a match in Januik Winery’s 2018 Columbia Valley Red Blend. With a solid foundation of body, notes of dark red fruit, and a smoky, oaky nose, this wine has met its match with this Gouda. The two play wonderfully together, both benefiting from their high level of acidity, and indisputable character. Don’t just reach for a cold glass of rosé the next time you’re lounging by the pool, as this pairing may be just the trick for beating the heat.
The Pairing Week 9: A Wisconsin cheddar and an Italian red wine walk into a bar...
Some of the best pairings can be found where you least expect them. This week’s pairing is a prime example of the little surprises you can stumble upon when you choose to taste outside the box of pairing theory. In a small village just 40 miles north of Milwaukee, Joe Widmer takes tradition seriously, and has devoted himself to upholding the old-world methods of cheesemaking that have been practiced by his family for nearing 100 years. Joe is one of a small number of Wisconsin cheesemakers who hold the title, Master Cheesemaker, and among the many cheeses he produces at Widmer’s Cheese Cellars, his cheddars are absolutely additive. This week we’ll focus our attention on his 6 year-old cheddar, a cheese with deep richness, a smooth creamy paste, and notes of citrus that appease the tannins of a red wine produced in Alto Piemonte, at the base of the Italian Alps. Tasting of brandy-soaked cherries and cocoa, this Nebbiolo blend, from Antonio Vallana, transforms when eaten along side this adolescent Wisconsin cheddar. The wine’s medium body, firm tannins, notes of dark fruit, and balanced structure of acidity benefit from the cheese, and push forward a delicate sweetness, previously hidden. It is our hope that this pairing will encourage you to take a bit more risk the next time you think about pairing cheese with wine.
Week 8: Go for the Goat!
This week’s pairing features one of our most popular cheeses from our case. And if there’s one cheese to count on for a reliable pairing, it’s typically, the L’Amuse Brabander. Hand-selected from a cheese cooperative in the Brabant region of Southern Holland, by Betty and Martin Koster of Fromagerie L’Amuse, Brabander is a pasteurized goat milk gouda that most everyone favors. Through careful selection, and a unique method for aging, Brabander is dynamic in flavor, meanwhile delivering a melt-in-your-mouth, yet slightly crystalline paste. Reminiscent of a sea salt and cashew caramel ice cream, Brabander is aged for just about 6 months at slightly higher temperature and humidity than typical of most goudas. For this week’s selection, we’ve paired this gouda with a food-friendly rosé from the Savoie region of Southeastern France, made from the regional varietal, Jacquére. With notes of rusty late season strawberries, light body, mild effervescence, and the perfect acid, the rosé from Domaine Labbé provides ideal qualities needed for an effortless pairing.
Week 7: Feeling sheepish
2019 Amity Vineyards White Pinot Noir & Ossau-Iraty
For those of us who work in the food and beverage industry, tasting sessions are an important part of our work. They provide space for reinforcing what we know, and continually remind us of how much we still have yet to learn. As we search for successful pairings, sometimes we’re lucky and find success early on. Other times it can feel like we’re lost in the woods, struggling to find our way out. Our cheese selection for this week is, Ossau-Iraty, a raw sheep milk cheese from the Pyrenees Mountains of southwestern France. One of the oldest cheeses in the world, this cheese is made with the milk of select breeds of sheep that thrive on forage native to the rough terrain surrounding the foothills and mountain pastures of the Ossau Valley in Béarn and the Iraty Forest of the Northern Basque Country. With a high butterfat, salty paste, and a definitive animal quality, Ossau-Iraty leaves its mark on the palate. While we struggled to find a solid pairing early on, we eventually found Amity Vineyard’s 2019 White Pinot Noir, from the Willamette Valley of Oregon, to be a refreshing side-kick to the forward bite, and rich, fatty finish of this old-world cheese. With a floral note of orange blossom and a peachy acidity, this wine provides a welcomed balance to this traditional french cheese.
The Pairing Week 6: Time for Tomme
Donnhoff Riesling 2019 & Stony Pond Farm Swallow Tail Tomme
We are well into the second month of our Pairing Series, and eager to introduce you to some new selections. We’re also delighted by how well this program has been received thus far. But for this week, we’re gonna circle back and shine more light on one of the cheeses from our first week’s selections. In 2007, Tyler and Melanie Webb, of Stony Pond Farm in Fairfield, Vermont, began producing milk for the farmer-owned cooperative, Organic Valley. Then, in the summer 2019, they transitioned to making cave-aged farmstead cheese with the milk from their blended herd of pastured cows. Their cheeses have found a home in our case, and our team of cheesemongers has fallen in love with them. Our latest wheels of their Swallow Tail Tomme possess a rich and creamy paste, forward salinity, and the rustic character expected of a tomme-style cheese. With the slightest kiss from an earthy bitter note, we found this cheese to pair nicely, albeit differently from the first time around with Donnhoff’s 2019 Riesling. An off-dry, medium-body wine with subtle effervescence, this Riesling has the proper balance of rich fruit and acidity to make this pairing memorable.
The Pairing Week 5: Alpine Cheese
2016 Red Car Sonoma Coast Chardonnay 2016 & Uplands Cheese Company Pleasant Ridge Reserve
On a small farm just outside of Dodgeville, Wisconsin, one of the most highly regarded cheesemakers in the United States hones his craft. With pastured milk harvested from his closed herd of roughly 200 cows, Andy Hatch of Uplands Cheese Company makes only two cheeses, and this time around we’re focusing our attention on his award-winning Pleasant Ridge Reserve. An alpine style cheese inspired by Swiss Gruyere and French Beaufort, Pleasant Ridge is buttery rich, with a silky smooth paste, and flavors reminiscent of caramelized sugar and roasted hazelnuts. As much as we love to eat this cheese on its own, we’ve found a brilliant wine pairing from Red Car Winery, located along the West Sonoma Coast of California. This medium-body Chardonnay, aged on mostly neutral French oak, provides the perfect backbone of delicate tannins, sweet fruit, and balanced acidity to help deliver an enjoyable mouthfeel, and amplify the cheese’s flavor qualities.
The Pairing Week 4: Get Your Goat
2019 Blanchet Pouilly-Fumé & Bûche Sainte-Maure
For this week’s pairing, we’re focusing our attention on an area in central France known as the Loire Valley. With its show-stopping fields of sunflowers, abundant vineyards and fruit orchards, along with châteaux abound, the Loire River Valley provides the perfect terrain and climate for some of France’s most cherished goat cheeses and white wines. Across the Loire River from Sancerre, another prominent French wine district, the Blanchet family has been making Pouilly-Fumé for generations, continually aiming towards a greater level of ingenuity and sustainability. Made with old-vine Sauvignon Blanc grapes, their wine delivers a citrus forward, smoky nose, and a mineral character born from the flinty soil native to the upper Loire. As we tasted this wine along side the pasteurized goat’s milk, Bûche Sainte-Maure, produced in the same region, we appreciated how this medium-body, dry wine stood its own against the cheese’s grassy bite, and supple, semi-sweet yogurty paste. A perfect pairing of place.
The Pairing Week 3: We proceed to get funkier
2020 Vietti Moscato d’Asti & Meadow Creek Dairy Grayson
A number of cheeses we sell in our case are seasonal in production, meaning they are only produced during specific months of the year. One good example is Meadow Creek Dairy’s Grayson, a soft-ripened, washed rind cheese made from unpasteurized cow’s milk. With the Blue Ridge Mountains of Southwest Virginia in their backyard, Meadow Creek makes this farmstead cheese the old-fashioned, hard way. From raising a herd of hybrid Jersey cows that live and birth exclusively outdoors, to rotationally grazing, and only making cheese while the animals feed on fresh pasture, this farm follows the rhythm and pace of their land. Each March, soon after calving begins, milk starts to flow, and with it cheesemaking commences. Wheels are generally aged for between 2 and 4 months, the former tasting more mild, while age brings about a more meaty, smoky flavor and a creamier paste. This cheese screams for a beverage pairing that provides a balance of acidity and residual sugars, one like this Moscato d’Asti from Piedmont, Italy. With notes reminiscent of apricot and ginger, and a kind bit of fizz, we found this wine not only capable of standing up to this cheese, but complementary in both taste and mouthfeel. Like all cheeses, enjoy them at room temperature, and serve this wine chilled.
The Pairing Week 2: And We Take A Baby Step Towards the Funk
We’re moving away from the super safe confines of triple creme brie towards a brie with a bit more in the way of flavor. Here is Peter’s report on this week’s pairing:
2018 Marion Borgo Valpolicella & La Ferme de la Tremblaye Brie Fermier
This lighter bodied red wine, made from a combination of Rondinella and Corvina grapes, hails from the Veneto region of northeastern Italy. Borrowing equally of modern and traditional techniques, this Valpolicella leans earthy and musty in profile, offering hints of warm spice which balance a salty palate and compliment this hand-ladled, farmstead cow’s milk brie. Buttery vegetal notes within the cheese are tempered by layers of stone fruit and ripe red berries within the grapes. Produced on an organic farm located just outside Paris, and with milk from a single herd, eating this cheese brings to mind savory flavors of toasted garlic and roasted asparagus. The milk used in making this cheese first undergoes a low-temperature form of pasteurization, called thermization, which aims to reduce spoilage bacteria within the milk, meanwhile preserving key milk components responsible for the desired flavors expected of true french bries. This pairing doesn’t disappoint.