Exceptional Cheeses Enhance Everyday Wines
It doesn’t take too much curiosity about wine and cheese before you “discover” some food or wine writer’s “perfect pairings”. Nothing makes wine taste better than cheese.
Chances are good, however, that you won’t be able to afford many of the “perfect” wines (if you can find them at all….) and you’ll have trouble finding the “perfect” exotic cheeses outside of their natural range in the countries where they are made. Fortunately, just about any wine and cheese pairing works really well.
Here on Vancouver Island we are fortunate to have access to the creamy rich artisan cheeses of the Natural Pastures Cheese Company of Courtenay in many retail outlets. What do you match with their award-winning Boerenkaas? Do you need to find a Dutch wine for their Amsterdammer? Must you have Sake for their Wasabi cheese? Or are our own domestic wines just fine?
Most wines love cheese and almost all cheeses reply in kind. The real trick is to go with what you know and do what you can with what you have at hand. Every cheese Natural Pastures makes comes from fresh milk from Beaver Meadow Heritage Dairy Farm. No chemicals, pesticides or growth hormones are involved and the resulting cheeses are as rich as they are righteous.
Unarguably, the buttery lactic acids in cheese tame the sharp (often green apple flavoured) malic acids in most white wines, making the wines taste more fruity. Those same complex fatty acids soften the astringent “bite” of the tannin in most red wines, turning even hearty young Cabernets mellow and silky.
Their award winning Cracked Pepper Verdelait is happier with a more traditional Cabernet Sauvignon. Light red wines like Peller Estates Oakridge Cabernet Sauvignon (+306969) $8.99 suddenly seem richly flavoured. Structured and full-bodied wines like Mission Hill Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon (+553321) $19.99 show off layers of blackcurrant and green bell pepper notes.
Cumin Seed Verdelait, with its delicate overtones of Christmas cake and cinammon spice cries out for a slightly sweeter and lighter white wine. Try to find a bottle of Hawthorne Mountain Gewurztraminer (+440685) $12.99 or, slightly sweeter, Calona’s Artist Series Gewurztraminer (+237453) $13.99. If you really want to make this cheese as happy as the cows it came from, splurge on a half-bottle of BC Late Harvest Riesling or Optima.
Amsterdammer could be thought of as Natural Pastures semi-soft answer to everyday cheeses like Cheddar. No wine, whether white or red, could fail to seem larger than life with a little slice of this cheese close at hand. Rich and creamy, a meal in a mouthful, Amsterdammer really needs a red.
Do your favourite domestic or imported Merlot a huge favour and serve a glass with Amsterdammer or even Boerenkass. Already a much softer style of red than Cabernet, your favourite Merlot will explode with jammy damson fruit and sweet blackberry notes.
Natural Pastures Boerenkass, made from unpasturized milk, has a full-bodied character, a tart and crumbly touch of salty butter and – like a good red wine – amazing persistence of flavour. Pair this cheese up with the priciest red you can afford for a match made in food heaven. And don’t be afraid to try it with a Tawny or Vintage Port ~ total wine and cheese pairing perfection!
