Wine and cheese go together so obviously that the pairing is taken for granted.
But are they really such good partners? I sometimes attend industry tastings where there is always a bread and cheese table, perhaps to keep tasters from passing out in their enthusiasm. So much wine, so many vintages and styles to go through in a couple of hours. But somebody has to do it.
Perhaps I'll taste a cheese, a Brie or blue, and then sip a wine, only to find that I can't get the essence of the wine at all. The cheese has wiped out the flavor. This has happened so often that I now regard the cheese table as dangerous, good for a time out, but a distraction from what I really want to study.
The other night, though, I went to a wine and cheese tasting and was amazed. This time, the pairings worked. The wines held their own with the cheese, and both tasted better together.
What happened? Simple. This wasn't grape wine but sake. Pure artisanal sakes with gorgeous names such as Pine at Lover's Cove (honjozo); Palace Snow "Pure" (junmai); Best in the East (junmai ginjo), and Euphoria (junmai ginjo). The type of each sake is in the parentheses. If you are a sake aficionado, you will know what the terms mean. I'm still learning. All were imported by Banzai Beverage Corp.
This was not a trade tasting but a small gathering put together by Barrie Lynn, who is so passionate about cheese that she has become known as The Cheese Impresario. The purpose was to show off a match that makes her ecstatic.
She'll pair cheese with nothing but the best. And her first taste of cheese with sake brought on an epiphany, a rapture that still sets her aglow.
For the tasting, she set out six artisanal cheeses from Wisconsin--a raw milk fenugreek Gouda from Holland's Family Farm in Thorp; four and 10-year old Cheddars from Hook's Cheese Company of Mineral Point; Airco, a hickory-smoked cow, sheep and goat milk cheese from Carr Valley Cheese Company of LaValle; Dunbarton Blue from Roelli Cheese Haus in Skullsburg, and an aged brick spread from Widmer's Cheese Cellars of Theresa.
Showy and assertive as they were, the cheeses couldn't obliterate a single nuance of the sakes. But this wasn't a jousting match. Fairly high in alcohol and some strongly fruity, the sakes were magnificent and generous companions.
According to Barrie Lynn, "cheese is the new black." And that makes sake the new--well, I'll let Barrie Lynn figure that one out.
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