Maroilles and premier cru Chablis

Visitors to this website will be used to my recommending white wine with cheese by now but I didn’t anticipate how good this particular combination would be.

I had opted for the cheese course - a generous hunk of Maroilles - at La Cour de Rémi, the hotel near the Channel we always try and visit on our last night in France and was misguidedly expecting the slightly funky Château le Puy 2007 we'd been drinking our main course to get by with it.

But in fact the premier cru Chablis we'd had with our first course - a 2010 Vieilles Vignes Montée de Tonnerre from Domaine Guy Robin was infinitely better, cutting through the rich cheese like a slice of apple.

Up to now I’ve thought you need a touch of sweetness in whites if they're to pair successfully with washed-rind cheeses but this was bone dry, though it admittedly might not have coped with a riper cheese. With those, I think you’d still be better off with an off-dry aromatic wine like a pinot gris or gewürztraminer or, better still, a Trappist beer or bière de garde from the same region as the cheese.

Still, if you don’t have any of those to hand looks Chablis will do - and probably improve with age.

Incidentally while I was looking for a link to a description of Maroilles cheese I found this very simple and delicious-looking Tarte Maroilles on the BBC Good Food website you might want to try.

If you’d like be able to check out all the food and wine pairings on the site you can buy a bundle of credits here to access my premium content.

And/or for regular updates on what and where I’ve been eating, drinking and travelling sign up for my weekly newsletter Eat This, Drink That, Live Well.

You may also enjoy …

Stir-fried lobster, egg white and scallop mousse with Chateau Fombrauge Bordeaux Blanc 2009Lamb biryani and grand cru gewurztraminerTurbot paired with white Chateauneuf-du-Pape