30 Second Wine Advisor: Red wine? Pass the cheese

[Robin Garr]

Red wine? Pass the cheese

Spaghetti with tomato sauce? Call for a Chianti. Light and crisply acidic, the Sangiovese-based Tuscan treat seems to play naturally with the tart-sweet flavor of the juicy, fresh tomatoes that go into this classic Italian-style pasta dish.

But suppose you're in the mood for a bigger, more structured red? I'm not sure I would ever recommend a blockbuster California Cabernet, say, or a top-level Bordeaux with pasta and Italian "gravy." That would be too much like using a sledgehammer to put up a little nail for a picture frame.

On the other hand, the hearty reds of France's Southern Rhône Valley, and to some extent their varietal imitators from around the world, offer aroma and flavor profiles that aren't entirely different from Tuscan reds, albeit typically a bit more big and bold. It's not hard to bring spaghetti and tomato sauce up to meet these big boys: Just bring a little cheese to the party.

The formula is as simple as this: Cheese, particularly the grated Italian hard cheeses like Parmigiano-Reggiano or Pecorino Romano that go so well with tomato-sauced pasta, add a touch of creamy fat that gives the zippy acidity and puckery tannins of Rhône-style reds something to push back against.

It worked just that way with today's featured wine, Liberty School 2008 "Cuvée," a Rhône-style red blend from California's Central Coast. Good with the spaghetti alone, it was a significantly better match with Parmigiano-Reggiano grated on for just the reasons stated: When I took a taste of pasta and sauce with the wine but no cheese, the wine was quenching but seemed to wash the tomato sauce right off my palate. With the cheese, it all came together, and the combination seemed to amplify the flavors. Grated cheese for the win!

My TN for the Liberty School "Cuvée" is posted in the Wine Focus thread for this month:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=43132&p=352897#p352897

To read this week's 30 Second Wine Advisor online, click
http://www.wineloverspage.com/wineadvis ... 120302.php

IMHO, Robin, it is dangerous gastronomic advice to recommend ANY cheese with ANY red wine, which is what your headline implies to me. The specific example you give would work because Parmesan is a very wine friendly cheese, as are many hard textured cheeses. In my experience, a lot of reds are ruined by softer more pungent cheeses, e.g. mature claret or Burgundy with ripe Camembert, and many cheeses, e.g. goats from Touraine, are much better with white wines than with reds. In general if in doubt about a specific cheese, I would recommend a mineral white rather than a red.

I know that in most places, including France, there is a convention of reaching for red whenever cheese appears, but thoughtful food and wine writers, like *** chef Alain Senderens and sommelier Olivier Poussier are trying to persuade people that different cheeses call for different wines and provide multiple suggestions.

I agree, Robin. I've been pairing southern Rhone wines with "Pasta and red sauce" for years with the addition of grated cheese....wonderful.

Drew

[Robin Garr]

IMHO, Robin, it is dangerous gastronomic advice to recommend ANY cheese with ANY red wine, which is what your headline implies to me. The specific example you give would work ...

True, Tim, headlines can be dangerous. The point I sought to make was that Parmigiano works well as a catalyst to open the traditional tomato-sauce-Chianti match to some bigger reds, provided that acidity (and perhaps tannins) remain as part of the equation.

The only other point I might make, but didn't mention in the article, is that few wines or cheeses would be literally "ruined" by a match. In my opinion most wine-and-cheese matches fall in the range of good > better > best, but "bad" is rare.

Robin, I agree that "ruined" may be too strong but "diminished" and "wasted" certainly are not, IMO.

Take a '93 1er cru Burgundy with ripe Camembert, which is a combination which I could not avoid at a friend's house recently. The first sip before taking the cheese was delicious but then the wine's velvety texture was obscured by the cheese's sticky consistency and the nuances of aroma and flavour were overpowered by the cheese's pungency. Above all the wine seemed to shorten on the palate.

The combination was eatable and drinkable but a more modest and acidic wine, or brut cider as recommended by the Normans, would have been much better. The qualities of the Burg would have been better able to express themselves with, say, quails, mushrooms and an uncomplicated sauce and any similarly unassertive meat dish.