News From The Cheese Caves

Our most popular class here at the Artisanal Cheese Center is Cheese & Wine 101. As I like to point out in the beginning of one of these seminars is the first thing that helps make cheese and wine pairings succeed is hunger and thirst. No other food satisfies nearly as well as a little bit of cheese. And if you are not so certain about the water quality, the wine (in moderation) is a safer beverage that can play alongside cheeses in spectacular ways.

When designing these classes we present a range of cheese types, from mild to strong. Using different milk types (goat, sheep, cow and mixed) helps to illustrate the relationships that cheeses have with different wines. Using cheeses with different textures, rind-types and provenances highlights other complementing relationships with various wines.

We use different wine types, from lighter to bigger wines; with at least one white wine, at least one red wine, possibly one rosé, for a total of three different wines. Wines that are made with different varietals (grapes) exhibit distinguishing components of cheese and wine synergies: balance, harmony, contrast, aromatics, etc. If each of the wines are made primarily with one type of grape this usually provides a clue as to what kinds of cheeses will work with a different wine produced from the same varietal.

As it is recommended on our CheeseClock it usually follows that the milder cheeses pair better with the milder wines, while the stronger cheeses usually demand the heavier wines. This is a big part of what this session illuminates. Fundamentally it is about the progression of cheeses – mild to strong. It just so happens that the corresponding wine partners to that progression of the cheeses is also milder to stronger.

Too often the recommendations for successful cheese and wine pairings fall back on the geographic indicators – as though cheese making and wine making were that simple! There is far more that goes into the production of these two than where they were made. The notion that shared terroir determines the best cheese and wine marriages is certainly an idea to explore and it can provide a thematic element to your cheese and wine experiences. Some of the most successful pairings that I have enjoyed have been those that are offered by cheeses and wines that are produced on opposite sides of the planet.

There is quite a lot that goes into designing a Cheese & Wine 101 class here. Along with showing all these pairing parameters by tasting several cheese types with different wine types, we also have the execution of these sessions. Fortunately we have quite a lot of practice. The more we conduct this seminar, the more we are convinced that cheeses and wines generally work pretty well together, more often than not.

Many of the questions that I have heard repeatedly center on the nutritional values of cheese. Though many people say that they love cheese, they also seem to fear it, as though it might be a little bit of an indulgence to nosh on a morsel of cheese now and then. To allay people’s fears of cheese I simply mention that cheese is, after all, made from our first food – milk.

This is the “take-away” from the classes I teach: cheese is a near-perfect, near-complete food. Cheese also happens to enjoy an excellent track record for food safety. Recognition of these qualities is part of what has been driving this cheese wave here in the U.S. for the past several years. The per capita consumption of cheese here has nearly tripled since 1970. There has been a growing connoisseurship of cheese along with significant improvements in cheese making.

During a down economy the 2009 American Cheese Society conference saw a record number of entries into competition – 1,327 –representing only a fraction of artisanal cheese making here in North America.

One thing that we can say about Americans is that we are a curious people, especially when it comes to the foods that we eat. Numerous publications, in print and on-line, as well other media are continuously addressing food issues. Yes, we have been eating too much, but hopefully we are gradually eating better. If our knowledge of cheese continues to improve, I firmly believe that we will continue that steady increase of consumption.

Our Cheese & Wine 201 highlights the nutritive values of cheese especially when it is accompanied by moderate consumption of wine, and it addresses the safety concerns that many people may have. Part of our Master Series takes these topics to a more focused level.

When writing Mastering Cheese, Lessons for Connoisseurship from a Maître Fromager I wanted to start off with a chapter on the nourishment that can be offered by quality cheese – Cheese is Good – And Good for You. In a later chapter I believe it was important to address the raw milk issue – Raw Milk and Real Cheese. There has been so much misinformation presented regarding this topic that I believed that a full investigation had to be incorporated into a book by that title.

One reason that most of us love cheese is because cheese loves us!