While she was here, I picked her brain a bit about her favorite wine pairings for her cheeses. Though she admits she isn’t a wine expert—more of a wine student, always brushing up on bottles to recommend with her cheeses—Hooper does subscribe to the fact that it’s often bubbles or crisp white wines that make synergetic partners for goat cheeses, rather than the big, powerful tannic reds that everyone seems to want to put next to the cheese board. The tanginess of her chèvre, which comes in its “naked” form as well as sprinkled with either herbes de Provence or in zesty red and green peppercorns, is a no-brainer partner next to a wine like the tangy, zesty Remy Pannier Sancerre ($25), a Sauvignon Blanc-based offering from the Loire Valley that’s just teaming with minerals, grapefruit, lime and gooseberry. Clean, crisp and refreshing all by itself, the Sancerre just sings with the cheese.
“Bijou” is French for “jewel,” and also happens to be the name of a Crottin-style goat cheese from Vermont Butter and Cheese. Its floral, citrus and yeasty undertones mirror those found in a Loire Valley sparkler, the Marquis de la Tour Brut. Though not produced in the méthode traditionelle like Champagne or Cava, it’s a steal at $10, full of delicate floral aromas, with a clean melon flavor (no doubt from the amount of Chenin Blanc in the blend…) Its bubbles wash away the Bijou’s rich creaminess.
If you are hosting a party, dinner or get-together and cheese is on the menu, here are a few tips to keep in mind:
- Try a riff on the epicurean philosophy that “If it grows together, it goes together.” Create regional cheese and wine combinations, like Spanish Manchego with Rioja, Tuscan Pecorino with Chianti, or Loire Valley goat cheese with Sancerre or Pouilly-Fumé.
- Lighter, fruitier red wines like Beaujolais, Merlot and Pinot Noir pair better with semi-hard or hard cheeses than super powerful or tannic reds.
- Sweet wines tend to work really well with bleu cheese. Port and Stilton is a classic pairing, where the fruity sweet yet crisp wine cuts through the cheese’s pungency. But also think outside the box, and match a wine like Quady Winery’s Black Muscat-based, rose- and hibiscus-hued Elysium with Fourme d’Ambert, a mild blue cheese from France’s Auverne region.
- When serving cheese, take it out of the refrigerator for at least 45 minutes before serving, or aromas and flavors will be dulled by the too-cold temperature (just as serving a white wine too cold numbs it.)
Kelly Magyarics is a wine and spirits writer, and wine educator, in the Washington, DC area. She can be reached through her website, http://www.kellymagyarics.com/. Kelly has never met a blue cheese that she doesn’t like.
