5 Tips on Perfectly Pairing Wine and Cheese

This article by Avery was originally published at ilovewine.com.

The best part about a wine tasting is the fact that the sommelier knows what wines go best with what cheeses. But when you’re out on your own, the choices can seem overwhelming. These five tips will help you with pairing wine and cheese no matter where you are.

1. Pair bold flavoured reds with aged cheeses

The older the cheese, the more flavourful it becomes. Many people love aged cheeses, especially with wine. If you’re looking for the best wine to pair with your favorite aged cheese, find a red wine that has bold flavours.

When you combine aged cheese with wine with high tannin concentrations, you will find they interact nicely together. Some of the best aged cheeses to pair with flavourful red wines are Cheddar, Gouda, or any Parmesan-style cheeses that have been aged for at least one year.

2. Pick sparkling wine to pair with your soft and creamy cheeses

Taste buds love creamy and soft cheeses as much as tasty desserts. So what wine is the best to pair with creamy cheeses? Sparkling wine.

Because sparkling wine has a high acidic level along with high levels of carbonation, taste buds can be easily cleaned from the stickiness made by creamy cheese. If you particularly like Brie or Cremont cheese, you will find that sparkling wine wipes your palate clean so that you can enjoy more of the creamy goodness.

3. Origination means everything when pairing wine and cheese

This is an unorthodox pairing tip, but it is an easy one to remember. Wines and cheeses that come from the same place (region of the world – France, Italy, etc…) are great to pair together. Why? Because each area has specific characteristics and tastes that are original to that particular region.

If you like Sauvignon Blanc, nice goat's cheese from France will pair nicely together. Or, if you prefer Chardonnay, you can match it with Epoisses de Bourgogne from France, too.

4. Sweet wines go well with the funkiest of cheeses

If sweet wine is what you fill your glass with, the best cheeses for your taste buds are the funkiest ones. Moscato or Late Harvest dessert wines are great with the stinkiest cheeses that usually make you turn your nose up.

But why is this the case? When you have a sweeter wine, such as a Moscato, and a piece of cheese that is extra funky, they balance each other out. The extreme tastes from both give them the perfect pairing relationship.

5. Not sure which is best? Always choose a nutty wine to go with your cheese

Sometimes pairing wine and cheese together might not seem like the easiest job. You may not know what region the wine or cheese came from or the age of the cheese. If this is the situation you find yourself in, here’s a general rule of thumb to get you by: go with a nutty wine to pair with any type of cheese.

The thing about using this universal rule is that cheese has a high concentration of fat which will inevitably counterbalance the tannin levels in red wine while also having the delicacy needed to compliment a beautiful-tasting white wine.

If you find yourself tasting Gouda or Swiss, for example, you can choose any nutty wine and feel confident that your tasting experience will be top notch.

Correctly finding a pairing for your wine and cheese doesn’t have to be rocket science. Everyone has different taste buds, and their desires for a wine and cheese pairing may be different from yours. Follow these five tips to find the perfect pairing for you.

 This article is provided by ILoveWine.