Pairing wine and cheese with Max McCalman

An archive post from a fascinating tasting with maître fromager, educator and author Max McCalman, one of the US's foremost cheese experts, back in 2009.

"It might seem odd to go to New York City to taste cheese but it’s home some of the most exciting stores and tasting programmes in the cheese world. One of the key figures is Max McCalman of Artisanal Cheese, author of several excellent cheese books including Mastering Cheese: lessons for connoisseurship from a Maitre Fromager.

I was lucky enough to have a private tasting with him yesterday which produced some excellent combinations. We tried six cheeses, a number of which were new on me and two wines, a crisp, citrussy 2007 Fillaboa Albariño from Rias Baixas and a soft, damsony Portuguese red - a Vidigal Reserva 2005 from Estremadura. Here are my tasting notes and Max’s observations."

*** an outstanding match **a good match *Fine, no clashes. No stars: best avoided.

Laurier
A pasteurized goats' milk cheese from the Vermont Butter and Cheese Creamery. A surprisingly full-flavour for a pasteurized cheese - almost more cow-like than goat but with a lovely citrussy freshness. Predictably great with the Albariño which acquired some lovely crisp green apple notes ***. Rubbed along fine with the Vidigal Reserva*

Ibores
A tangy semi hard goats cheese from Extremadura in Spain, rubbed with pimenton which gave it a spicy edge (and a stand-out colour on a cheeseboard). Although Max and I agreed that geographical proximity doesn’t always make for great matches (Epoisses and red burgundy being a classic example) we both thought the Estremadura from over the border in Portugal was a good match ** The Albariño worked fine too**

Evora
This Portuguese unpasteurized sheep's cheese which is set the traditional way with cardoon rather than animal-based rennet was a new one on me and one of the stand-out cheeses of the tasting. It had a lovely clean fresh citrussy taste and crumbly texture that was terrific with the Albariño *** and worked well with the Estemadura too **

Robiola Rochetta
A luxuriant fresh Italian cheese made from mixed milks (cow, sheep and goat. Max is of the opinion that mixed milk cheeses often give you the best of all worlds - the creaminess of cow with the balancing acidity of goats cheese and tanginess of sheep cheese) It was a touch creamy for the Albariño* and the Estremadura red was fine ** but there’s probably a better pairing out there

Sbrinz
A crystalline parmesan-style cheese from Switzerland made from whole rather than semi-skimmed milk which gives it a fuller taste than parmesan. Very good with the Estremadura red***, fair with the Albariño* (Interestingly the tasting note on the Artisanal website recommends champagne as a pairing which I can imagine would be delicious)

Bleu d’Auvergne
A particularly fine example of this lesser known French blue - creamy, salty with a slightly crystalline finish. Really did no favours to the Albariño (no stars) though eating it with a slice of sourdough just about kicked it into touch with the Estremadura (*)

All in all there was a lot to be learned from this beautifully balanced and unusual cheeseboard which - note - avoided pungent washed rind cheeses and concentrated more on hard and semi-hard cheeses with a clean finish. (Soft cheeses like bloomy-rinded and semi-soft washed-rind cheeses have a mouthcoating quality that often set the palate up for a wine-clash though the bright primary fruit of New World reds can sometimes power through).

 

Pairing Cheese and Champagne

Cheese and champagne might not sound like natural bedfellows but if you think about the pairing for a moment you immediately realise they have quite a thing going. Many canapés - like gougères and cheese straws - are made with cheese for example and go wonderfully well with champagne but what about individual cheeses?

I had the opportunity to taste a range of cheeses with champagne recently and came to a few new conclusions.

• Mild slightly chalky cheeses work well. The classic example is Chaource, a cheese which is often paired with champagne but a mild but flavourful cheese like Gorwydd Caerphilly is good too. Very mild cheese like Mozzarella is an undemanding but also slightly uninteresting match

• Rosé champagne seems a more flexible partner than ordinary non-vintage. We tried two - a Moet rosé and a Benoit Marguet Grand Cru Rosé and they both showed well, particularly with Mistralou (goats cheese wrapped in chestnut leaf) and a Brie de Meaux. But a stronger goats’ cheese killed the Marguet stone dead so you need to take care.

• An Ossau Iraty sheeps cheese went well with most of the champagnes - the slightly nutty taste and smooth texture of hard sheeps’ cheese seems a good foil to champagne

• Washed rind cheeses as usual are tricky. If they’re not too mature, like the Reblochon and Langres we tried, they may work but if they’ve been allowed to get very mature like an incredibly gooey St Marcellin they’ll slaughter champagne (along with most other wines)

• Strong blues, as might be expected, are quite overwhelming but the creamy texture of Stichelton, an unpasteurised verson of Stilton, made it an unexpectedly good match for an elegant low dosage Jacquesson 732 (though coming mainly from the 2004 vintage it has quite a bit of bottle age)

• Parmesan is probably the ultimate champagne cheese - a case of umami meets umami

In general the stronger the cheese the older and more powerful the champagne you need. A mature Comté for example overwhelmed the fresh-tasting non-vintage champagnes but I suspect would have been great with an older champagne or a Prestige Cuve like Krug.

I shall just have to carry on experimenting ;-)

Image by delo from Pixabay