WTN: Fun assortment of wines with cheese

Spencer had a few of us over at his place yesterday for a great lineup of wines and a mix of cheeses from Artisanal. The cheeses were really fantastic across the board (and I will definitely have to drop in at Artisanal the next time I'm in NYC) - and the wines certainly didn't suck either! Thanks for having us over and for some great wines!

1999 Lebrun Servenay Champagne Blanc de Blancs
Very pleasant with ripe citrus fruits, pear and biscuit flavours over faintly chalky notes and some creaminess on the back end emerging with time.

2005 Dirler-Cade Riesling Kessler Heisse Wanne
Served blind by Spencer. Did anyone even pick this as Riesling? (I was guessing Sylvaner.) Quite a strange nose with some floral and musky elements, varnish and metallic notes. Quite ripe in the mouth with more pleasant white fruited flavours and minerals, but finishes a little awkward and warm.

1990 Trimbach Riesling Cuvée Frédéric Emile Vendange Tardive
Amazing wine; starts out with stunning aromatics of white fruits, apple, touches of earth, smoke and honey and then with air becomes more herbal and forestal, picking up pine cone and rosemary scents. Incredibly polished with an almost glossy-texture in the mouth, rich but very precise with all the flavours combining seamlessly and finishing very long.

1983 Reichsgraf von Kesselstatt Graacher Domprobst Riesling Spätlese
Surprisingly youthful in appearance with a clear light gold colour, combining layers of pear, apple and citrus fruits that still seem very fresh with herbal elements and developed smoky, honeyed and earthy flavours. Very light, gentle and elegant with bright acids underneath, delicious.

1974 Cordero di Montezemolo Barolo Monfalletto
Dead, unless you're really a caramel-fiend.

1999 Éric Texier Hermitage
Incredibly young, but still so much fun to drink with ripe dark fruits, olives and herbal elements flavours wrapped in smoky and meaty flavours. This is built for the long haul with a firm spine of tannin and really good acidity giving the fruit a sense of real freshness. Great Northern Rhône in a cult-Californian package (seriously, what's up with the massively heavy bottle?)

1996 Jean Raphet et Fils Chambertin-Clos de Bèze
A 'wow' wine from the moment the scent hits you - really intoxicating aromatics combining red fruits, cardamom, sandalwood, leather and floral elements into a perfume that's hard to pull yourself away from. In the mouth it's all silken finesse with amazing breadth of flavour and a finish that just stays with you. Really stunning, and my favourite of the night.

[David M. Bueker]

Good notes Salil. Thanks for bringing the '83. It was certainly fresher than the '83 Grunhaus we had last week, though not as complex.

The herbal notes on the Trimbach were very interesting. I would never have expected them, and in a way they brought my mind towards older Grunhaus, as that's the only other producer where I get those types of herbal and pine aromas with any regularity.

I enjoyed the Texier as it got more air. It either needs time or a good decanting.

The Raphet was youthful but magic in a glass. Delicious stuff, and not at all an overoaked mess as is sometimes claimed for NBI products.

Salil
Ta for the notes.
Any comments on the age old question of wine & cheese matching? Any standout combinations, or any that surprised (positively or negatively)?
regards
Ian

[David M. Bueker]

Well the Uplands Pleasant Ridge (cow's milk) was a disaster with the Trimbach. The more I try it, the more I find wine and cheese matching is a crap shoot.

Nice selection of wines and interesting to see the similarities/differences from different styles of riesling and different regions.

I think it is mainly the Cuvee Unique wines from NBI that were an oaky mess and if I remember correctly Raphet did not always have those cuvees. I liked a few of his wines but once I stopped shopping at NBI I never really sought them out. This one sounds fun.

Well the Uplands Pleasant Ridge (cow's milk) was a disaster with the Trimbach. The more I try it, the more I find wine and cheese matching is a crap shoot.

When you say crap shoot, do you mean unpredictable? I agree that there are a lot of bad wine and cheese matches (although I love both so much that I can usually suffer through it, unless one of the items is so fine that it would be a sacrilege ). I don't know Uplands Pleasant Ridge, but for the wine and cheese styles I know, I think the pros and cons of matching are pretty predictable. Which may be redundant, given the fact that I know them, but...

[David M. Bueker]

I find wine and cheese matching very unpredictable. In fact I have tried to do cheese plates that I pulled directly from "the experts" (e.g. Max McCalman) & ended up with more bad than good.

I find wine and cheese matching very unpredictable. In fact I have tried to do cheese plates that I pulled directly from "the experts" (e.g. Max McCalman) & ended up with more bad than good.

I guess vintage variation in wine can change a lot and change some pairings quite a bit. Plus of course variation across producers, vineyards, etc. So, matches of specific cheeses with wines from certain regions or grapes may be too broad.

And now that you mention it, I'm not so much into wine and cheese 'matching' as I am into cooking with cheese (as a non-meat eater and all). So I'm somewhat sensitive to how different cheeses will go with different wines but it is not as dramatic since the cheese gets melted during cooking anyway.

Salil
Ta for the notes.
Any comments on the age old question of wine & cheese matching? Any standout combinations, or any that surprised (positively or negatively)?
regards
Ian

Good question, Ian....stupid answer: It depends.
Like others, I find that matching cheese & wine can be a bit (or...a lot) of a crap shoot. There are some obvious no-no's (like a really goaty chevre
w/ a big Napa Cabernet), though some occasionally work. But there are some matches you're intuition would say would work...and they're
miserable failures.
I find that often the cheese can destroy the wine, sometimes it merely changes the wine, and..on very rare occasions...you get that synergy
that happens and a cheese makes the wine magical. I seldom find, though, the opposite....where a wine makes a cheese magical.
So...I read all these cheese books that suggest (and "suggest" is the operative word here) wines to pair w/ a particular cheese with a very jaundiced/skeptical
eye. You often can't really tell until you have both the cheese & the wine in front of you.
I once asked LauraWerlin about why a cheese can so often impact the taste of a wine so dramatically and she suggested it's the enzymes
in the cheese. Whether she knew what she was talking about or not...I have no idea.
Of course, if your cheese comes in a can that squirts it out (a.k.a. CheezeWhiz), then it's all pretty irrelevant. I hope you folks don't
have that abomination across the pond, Ian.
So...that's my stupid answer...and I'm a'stickin' to it.
Tom

Tom
That Cheezewizz sounds... errm... 'interesting'. I guess we'd need a parent of school-aged kids to advise if we have it over here. I'd never notice such a product.

The 'it depends' I'd very much agree with, as I would David's eloquent 'Crap-shoot'. It is indeed a notoriously difficult area - hence always keen to hear individual experiences (and hence the question!) when serving the two together.

It's interesting that cheese has the ability to be an utterly appalling match at times, as per the example mentioned by David. Indeed sometimes the mis-matches can be a real surprise.

regards

Ian

I have found Janet Fletcher of the San Francisco Chron to do a good job describing different cheeses and wine reccos for them. She writes a weekly cheese column and at times a feature food article for the Chron. I believe her background as chef has helped her greatly with matching wine and cheese. It probably doesn't hurt that her husband Doug Fletcher is a wine maker known and respected in the valley for many years. Chimney Rock, etc, he now oversees winemaking for the Terlato Group in CA. Confession Janet & Doug are personal friends but I don't think that has clouded my comments.

Lou
An interesting insight. Indeed I wonder if cheese specialists would be better at finding wine matches than wine enthusiasts are in finding cheese matches? It strikes me that might just be the case as in general wine and food matching seems much easier than when trying to match wine to cheese. Does this mean cheese is a more complex product...?

regards

Ian

[David M. Bueker]

An interesting insight. Indeed I wonder if cheese specialists would be better at finding wine matches than wine enthusiasts are in finding cheese matches?

Perhaps but not always. As I mentioed above, most of my attempts are based on recommendaitons from Max McCalman, a cheese specialist.