Wine with

Wine with cheese board

Red wine with cheese is the most stubborn mistake at every birthday party. Cheese is fat and salt, red wine has tannin, and the two make each other bitter. White, sparkling and above all fortified wine do better, and one style does better than everything.

Three styles that work

  1. 1

    Oloroso or Amontillado

    Dry oxidative sherry is the cheese wine most people skip, and it beats almost everything else on the board. Nuts, dried fruit and a savoury length that handles everything from aged Gouda to Manchego. Oloroso with the hard cheeses, amontillado with the semi-hard. One bottle, the whole board.

  2. 2

    Champagne with some age

    Brie, camembert and other bloomy rinds call for bubbles. The mousse scrubs the fat away, and a champagne that spent a few years on its lees brings its own brioche and nuts to mirror the cheese. A vintage or a grower cuvée with long ageing; a young supermarket Brut is too thin.

  3. 3

    Pedro Ximénez with blue cheese

    Stilton, roquefort, gorgonzola: salty, sharp and unctuous. That needs sweetness opposite it. PX is thicker than port and, often carrying more than 400 grams of sugar per litre, one of the sweetest wines you can buy, and precisely that balance turns blue cheese into dessert. Small glass, small sip, big impression.

Without alcohol

Dry alcohol-free sparkling

With cheese the mousse does the work, not the alcohol. A dry alcohol-free sparkling scrubs the fat away as well as a crémant. Keep it cold and drink it young; the aroma does not last a year.

Frequently asked questions

Which red wine does work with cheese?

A mature Rioja Reserva with aged hard cheese. The tannin has softened by then and the cheese is dry enough not to turn it bitter. With soft cheeses red remains a loser.

How many wines do you pour with a cheese board?

One good one is enough, and then it is an amontillado. If you want two, add the PX for the blue cheese. Three or more is a tasting, not a drinks evening.

No scores, but an opinion. The bottles I name I tasted myself; how each reached me is stated at the bottom of every review.

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