WINE WITH FOOD

Cheese and wine are basic simple foods, wine being fermented grape juice and cheese milk that has been coagulated into curds. Of course in the hands of skilled craftsmen they become much more than that. Unfortunately understanding and categorizing them and all of their variations can quickly become confusing because many of their characteristics overlap while others make them entirely different from one another. For example I’m a wine guy and I’ve come to the conclusion that it makes no sense to recommend “chardonnay” to go with a particular cheese or other food because chardonnay can be made in widely different flavor styles from buttery/oaky to crisp/green apple. Same thing happens with cheese. Milk, whether its from cows, sheep, goats or buffaloes, can be transformed into cheeses that are each extraordinarily different in terms of their flavor and texture.

For years I’ve suggested that the confusing world of wine could be organized into some basic flavor profiles or families. For many people that’s all they might ever want to know. I felt that the same thing must be true for cheeses too—some way of organizing all of those amazing cheeses out there into some basic families so that at least the novice cheese taster could have some way of understanding this immense world. I talked with a number of cheese heads to see if it could be done. There isn’t a legal classification for cheeses but it turns out that they can be grouped into families. What follows then is my attempt to organize wine and cheese into basic families and from there to give some tips about how to enjoy them together.

Cheese Families   

Related Topics: Describing Wine According to Flavor Profile

Home | Meet John Ash | John's Books | Wine & Food | John's Calendar
Hot Links | Contact John | Site Map | Sauvignon Republic