Cheese and Wine Pairing

Cheese and Wine Pairing: Red wine is often seen as the perfect partner to Cheese however white wine can also be paired with 70\% of French cheeses; a dry white or even a sweet white wine.

Advice: Avoid too light a wine with your cheese

Keep it simple - an often made mistake is to serve too big a cheeseboard. You're better off serving one perfect cheese with a good wine than four or five varieties of cheese.

Remember that in general, the more a cheese is left to ripen, the stronger it will become and will probably dominate the flavour of the wine. Cheeses that are hard to match with wine are blue cheeses, smoked cheeses and those with strong aromas.

Blue Cheese

One of the great wine-cheese partnerships is Roquefort and Sauternes. The combination of honeyed sweetness and salty tang is perfect, but you can swap the Roquefort for any similar blue cheese and replace the Sauternes with a moelleux wine from the Loire, Bergerac or Jurancon.

As an alternative, try partnering a blue cheese with a full-bodied red such as Pomerol.

Soft Cheese

Soft cheeses such as Brie, Neufchatel and Camembert can be accompanied by a light, fruity red like a Beaujolais or Loire (Saumur or Touraine). Soft cheeses also go well with soft, medium-bodied reds like Languedoc or Vins de Pays d'Oc.

Wines can be matched with soft cheeses according to the rind of the cheese - Cheeses with a washed rind such as Munster, Le Brin, Reblochon, Terroir, Chaumes and Touree de l'Aubier can be enjoyed with full-bodied reds like Bourgogne, Pomerol, Saint-Emilion, and also whites from Alsace, such as Gewürztraminer and Muscat.

Cheeses with a natural rind such as Crottin de Chavignol go well with dry and fruity whites like Alsace, Anjou, Sancerre, and Pouilly-Fuisse and with roses like Cotes du Rhone or Rose d'Anjou.

Semi Hard Cheese

Another great wine-cheese partnership is Cantal or Raclette with dry whites like Macon Blanc, Jura or Savoie Wine or dry roses like Rose de Provence or light reds like Beaujolais.

Goat's Cheese

Arguably one of the best wine-cheese combinations is fresh goat's cheese paired with wines made with the Sauvignon Blanc grape variety - a great choice for those fashionable goat's cheese and chargilled vegetable dishes you find in smart restaurants. You could also try a Chardonnay from South Burgundy.

Make life easier

To make your life easier when pairing cheese with wine, choose from the Vins de Cepage range:

Type of cheese/Wine Pairing

Goat's Cheeses: Sauvignon Blanc
Mild Cheeses: Gamay, Chenin
Medium Cheeses: Pinot Noir, Merlot
Strong Cheeses: Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah (Shiraz), Grenache