Growers and Grocers

New Years Eve demands champagne.  But what about that headache the morning after? 

A proposed solution:  take in your champagne with a flight of cheeses that will nourish you while accentuating the flavors of both food and drink.  Your taste buds and your friends will thank you for the effort!

First, let’s talk champagne, also called effervescent or sparkling wine when produced outside the Champagne region in France.  For this method of vinification, grapes do not need to ripen as much as other wine grapes, so they can be grown in regions farther north.  In the United States, this means that sparkling wine is produced in cold weather states like Massachusetts, Oregon, New York and Washington state. 

(See http://www.thebetterdrink.com/ for links to these vineyards.)  

There are two types of champagne for which I will recommend cheeses, those from the Chardonnay grape and the Pinot Noir grape.  Blanc de Blanc champagnes and sparkling wines are made from the Chardonnay grape and are very light and delicate, while the Blanc de Noir style comes from the Pinot Noir grape and has a heartier feel.

To break it down even further, I am considering only dry and extra dry levels of sweetness.  Dry champagnes are the least sweet and are signified by the brut classification.  Slightly sweeter champagnes are called extra sec, or extra-dry. 

(Demi-Sec and Doux are classifications for sweeter dessert wines, whose pairings are beyond the scope of this article.)

Here are my suggestions for pairing Blanc de Blanc and Blanc de Noir champagne with a cheese plate.  The cheeses are listed in order of strength.  Choose no more than four cheeses from each list.  The lists are, to some degree, interchangeable.  All of the cheeses have possible substitutions that you can, and should, ask your local cheesemonger about.  

Brut/Extra Sec/Extra Dry - Blanc de Blanc:

1.  Pierre Robert – A rich triple cream with a bright white rind, and a paste that is luxuriously creamy.   

2.  Spenwood – This gentle yet elaborate sheep’s milk cheese comes from the English countryside.

3.  Keen’s Farmhouse Cheddar- old-school English cheddar, tangy and deep.

4.  Vacherin Mont D’or – Encircled by spruce bark, this round cheese has a full, robust creaminess that evokes a mid-summer pasture in France.

5.  Langres – Strong and tangy little washed rind cheese, 2 ounces of reddish-orange complexity.

Brut/ Extra Sec/Extra Dry -  Blanc de Noir:

1. Brillat Savarin - An unbelievably supple triple cream with a fancy French pedigree, pure opulent buttery bliss.

2. Nancy’s Hudson Valley Camembert – An elaborate yet gentle flavor in this blend of cow and sheep’s milk, one of the greatest American cheeses when fresh.

3. Gruyere - Delightfully smooth and nutty, pleases every palate.  (Buy only A.O.C. certified gruyere to ensure quality.)

4. Cantal – An ancient English masterpiece, a golden mountain cheese that is both woodsy and meaty.

5. Aged Gouda - (3 years)- Should be bright orange and hard to cut, melts in your mouth with a sonorous saltiness and a pronounced spiciness. 

In general, what makes a good cheese and wine pairing?   Many experts advise trying to pair from within geographic regions, where similar terroir can lend an almost magically parallel atmospheric quality to both cheese and wine.  If it is possible for you to obtain products from the same region, such as Massachusetts, New York, or France, give it a try, using the suggested types and styles of the cheeses above as a guideline for matching flavors.  

The essential concept when pairing any wine and cheese is that you first want to take time to really think over the flavors themselves and then consider how they are interacting with each other.  Pause often as you taste the pairings.  Even if you are in the midst of a lively New Years Eve celebration try to savor each bit and to connect the essence of the taste back to the very plots of earth from which your wine and cheese were crafted.   Then, toast to a year of exploring new pairings!