SUB-ZERO WINE BLOG

We were lucky enough to find ourselves dining at the Relais San Maurizio, a former hillside Monastery in Italy’s Piedmont region and found myself confronted with a plate of cheese after a very satisfying meal. I often opt for cheese as a meal closer, rather than dessert, having more of a savory tooth than a sweet tooth. But the perennial questions arises: what to drink with cheese. The answer is not so simple. In fact I asked the sommelier what he would choose. We had the remains of three bottles on the table, a Barolo and a Sauvignon blanc, both made by our guest Angelo Gaja, the godfather of Modern Italian wine. (He was finishing his meal with fruit rather than cheese,) We also had some champagne. The sommelier replied, cagily, “it depends what you like.”


In the end, when pressed, he opined that the sauvignon blanc would be the best choice for the goat cheeses on the plate, of which there were four. And in fact, this is indeed almost always the case. Creamy young goat cheeses pair much better with white wine, with it’s bright acidity, then they do with heavier reds. If we had a leftover chardonnay it almost certainly been good with the goat cheeses. The same can be said for many sheep’s milk cheeses. For aged cow’s milk cheeses, like Montgomery cheddar or the Piedmontese Castelmagno which was one of our selections, a heavier red like the Barolo we were drinking is usually a great match. (And was this time.) However, a really old, sharp cow’s milk cheese can overwhelm a complex, aged red, which may be one reason the Italians consider champagne the ideal wine to accompany Parmigiano Reggiano, the so-called kind of cheeses. And finally, when confronted with a salty moldy blue cheese you need to find a sweet wine. Stilton with Port and Roquefort with Sauternes are classic pairings which will never disappoint. But the fact is, the combinations of wines and cheeses which can make sweet music together is almost limitless.