Kathleen Lisson: Hi, I am Kathleen Lisson, certified specialist of wine, and I am going to give you some easy tips for wine and food pairing. Adding a cheese course to your next special meal, could make a great meal extraordinary, and I am going to give you some tips on how to pair wines and cheeses at your next meal.
My first tip would be a pungent and intensely flavored cheese tastes magically better with a sweeter wine. I have a liquid vineyard glass of wine this is a dessert wine. This cheese and wine would also work well with off-dry wines like an off dry Riesling or an off-dry Gewurztraminer.
What I think happens is the sweetness takes away just that edge of pungency in the cheese, leaving you to taste the flavors in the wine and the texture of the cheese, making the pairing better than the some of it's parts.
The next tip is, triple cream cheeses pair really well with sparkling wine. This is a great tip. If you're going to have a special occasion like a birthday, special family dinner or any opportunities that you have to make sparkling wine toast, or serve sparkling wine with a meal, just simply pair it with a triple cream cheese and that will give you one more appetizer choice that you can give to your guests at the beginning of the meal.
The next one is goat cheese which is a great favorite of mine. It's one of my favorite cheeses ever and it pairs really great with a dry white wine. I like to pair goat cheese with Sauvignon Blanc, but any dry white wine will work. The acidity with the wine pairs really well with that port tangy taste of the goat cheese, it's a pairing I really like.
The next one we'll do is, mild dessert cheeses. They pair well with red wines and the milder the cheese, go with the fruity or red wine. If it's more of a sharp cheese, goes with a little bit of a wine with a bigger flavor, as far as a red wine, and that's because the sharp more flavorful cheese can stand up to the more flavorful taste in the bigger wine.
After that I like to recommend soft cheeses like Camembert and Brie. They pretty well match with red wine as well. It's another red wine match that you can think, either Camembert or Brie are very soft cheeses. They are very creamy in texture, and I think that creamy texture can take on to sometimes harsh tannins in the big red wine. It makes the tannins a little softer, the creaminess of the cheese gets on your tongue and kind of coats a little bit and we know the tannins dry out your tongue, so lessening the drying factor of the tannins is something that the cheese really does making the pair work well together.
Then I'd also like to recommend smoked cheeses like very popular great cheese that I like a lot is a smoked Gouda. That will pair really well with Red Zinfandel, Shiraz, Syrah or Pinot Noir. Those four wines tend to have a smoky flavor to them, so they really compliment the smoky flavor in cheese.
Then the last tip I'd like to tell you today, is that you can serve cheeses on either an appetizer or a dessert. So don't just think of cheese as before the meal or a separate appetizer in a cocktail party. You can really use it in anytime in the meal that you want to separate the two courses that you're serving with the cheese course, or have it in the beginning or the end. If you're having a cheese with the red wine, this is a great idea to serve it as an appetizer, because it gives you a chance to open up a red wine early giving it a chance to breathe a little bit, you can put it in a decanter.
I often think that when I open a red wine, it actually tastes better at the end of the meal, 20 minutes after it's given a little bit of time to air out. So if you make a red wine cheese choice and you pair it with a red wine at the beginning of the meal, you can definitely have your guest savor that red wine, have it really open up. So it's definitely added peak as far as taste, when you actually serve the entrée, you want to serve it with.
If you're serving white wines, consider serving it with a dessert or actually if you have any kind of meal, and you've just seen over your last few family meals, you always have those extra two glasses of wine in that last bowl of wine. You can't seem to get rid of or guests are leaving the table with one or two swallows of wine, unswallowed, unfinished at their plate setting.
Consider serving a cheese course for dessert. This gives your guests time to lounge around at the table, finish that excited conversation they've had for dinner, savor those last few swallows of wine with a great cheese pairing.
So let's think about some questions that we can answer using the information I've given you the tips. First, I am serving a hot and spicy dish for dinner, and I am giving it a sweet wine to match. Which cheese could I serve, either an appetizer or a dessert with the sweet wine?
The next question, I am serving a stake for dinner with a big red 5:14 wine. Which cheese should I serve for an appetizer or a dessert? How about if it's a special occasion, so I am serving a sparkling wine, which cheese could I pair with it for a great appetizer at the beginning of the party?
What wine and cheese pairings do you enjoy now? Are there any new wine and cheese pairings that you're considering trying as a result of listening to the tips, and would you serve a cheese course at a family or a special dinner?
Thank you very much for learning with me some wine and cheese pairing tips, and if you like more information about wine and cheese pairing and wine and food pairings, please visit my blog kathleenlisson.blogspot.com. Thank you very much, have a great day.!
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