Some exciting drink pairings for cheese that aren’t wine

We automatically think of matching wine and cheese or beer and cheese but there are many drinks that work just as well and can give a real ‘wow factor’ to your cheeseboard.

Cider for example makes a very enjoyable lunchtime partner for a selection of cheese or a ploughmans while an elderberry wine or glass of sloe gin can make an unusual alternative to port for an after dinner cheeseboard. I also like soft drinks with cheese, which I often eat as a light lunch or snack, when I don’t particularly want to drink anything alcoholic.

Here are my suggestions for individual types of cheeses:

Goats’ cheeses
Apple, citrus and floral flavours work well with goats cheese so I often turn to soft drinks such as apple juice, elderflower cordial or traditional lemonade with young fresh cheeses, particularly in a salad. With more mature cheeses try an apple-flavoured eau-de-vie.

White-rinded cheeses such as Camembert and Brie
Milder versions work particularly well with red berry-flavoured drinks. (I know I said I wouldn’t talk about beer but a Belgian raspberry or cherry beer is a great partner for a Brie.) Guignolet, an inexpensive French cherry-flavoured aperitif, is a intriguing pairing for a slightly riper cheese though if it’s got to the state where it’s oozing over the board you may be better with a stronger drink like a Calvados or apple brandy. Apple flavoured drinks such as cider and Pommeau also go well with Camembert.

Hard and semi-hard cheeses such as cheddar and Gouda
Again cider will work well with these cheeses if they’re not too mature but aged cheddars and Goudas need something more intense, rich and nutty. Dry amontillado, palo cortado and dry oloroso sherries (though these strictly count as wines they’re an unusual pairing), malt whiskies that are aged in sherry casks, armagnacs and artisanal dark rums are all interesting matches. You might also try sake of which I understand the author Max McCalman, affineur of Artisanal in New York is a great champion. I haven’t given it a run through but imagine it would go particularly well with slightly waxy cheeses such as Beaufort and Comté.

Semi-soft/washed rind cheeses
E.g. Epoisses, Langres, Munster and Pont L’Evêque when allowed to mature to the limit, i.e. the proverbial ‘stinky’ cheese. These are real red wine - and even white wine-killers so it makes sense to look for alternatives. The pairings I find work best (apart from strong Belgian beers) are French ‘marcs’ such as marc de Champagne and marc de Bourgogne and - believe it or not - Dutch genever!

Sheep’s cheeses
The most wine-friendly of cheeses so what other options might tempt you? Poire William, I once discovered, was a fantastic match for Pecorino and I’m sure would go with other sheeps’ cheeses too. You might also try quince-flavoured liqueurs on the Manchego principle. Bramley and Gage makes one and Emporia Brands imports one from Gabriel Boudier. I also like dry, nutty sherries and Madeiras with sheep’s cheese but again that’s straying into wine territory.

Blue cheeses
As I’m sure you well know salty, pungent blue cheeses need a contrasting note of sweetness to balance them so any port drinkalike will fare well. Elderberry wine, sloe or damson gin are real champions. Going in a totally different direction, peaty whiskies such as Lagavulin and Talisker are also fantastic with strong blue cheeses, especially Roquefort.

Image by StockSnap from Pixabay

Is Koshu the best match for Japanese food?

I suspect you’ll be hearing a lot about Koshu this year. No, it’s not some unfamiliar aspect of Japanese cuisine but a white wine made from a grape of the same name. A campaign to promote it in the UK was launched at a lunch in London yesterday by a VIP line-up of Japanese goverment officials from the Yamanashi prefecture where most of the winemakers are based.

So what’s it like? Well, I think it’s fair to say it wouldn’t stand out in a large consumer tasting. The wines - well, the unoaked ones at least - are fresh and clean with a fierce aciidity - not particularly to the current British - or American taste. For nearest comparison think Aligoté, Muscadet-sur-lie, bone dry Riesling. and young Chablis which the Japanese have always liked with food. The oak-aged examples are slightly fuller and rounder but nothing like as rich as a barrel-aged Chardonnay. Viura was the nearest comparison that came to mind.

Apart from a couple of wines which I’ll mention later there weren’t any stand-out examples or perhaps it was simply a question of adjusting ones palate to a new wine style. But it was with Umu’s kaiseki menu*, with which we tasted them in flights of three, that their virtues really became apparent. The cooking at Umu, which has a Michelin star, is in the opinion of many, the best Japanese food in London. I’ve certainly not tasted better outside Kyoto and the chef Ichiro Kubota certainly excelled himself yesterday.

The meal started with the most spectacular array of Iwaizakana (above right) a special New Year selection of dishes which was as beautiful as it was delicious. - a riot of different colours and textural contrasts. With ten components in all, each intricate, each unfamiliar, it’s hard to recall let alone describe each element accurately, but it included a amazing dish of squid and sea cucumber, a prawn, a tiny poached mandarin and I think, stuffed kelp with herring and extraordinary black beans topped with poached carrot and gold leaf. (Each element had some relation to water whether it was the river, pond or ocean) No flavour was intrusive but it encompassed a complete range of tastes - salty, sour, sweet, bitter and umami. And the koshu was as good an accompaniment as you could have chosen, refreshing the palate between each bite and allowing you to appreciate each new texture.

It also worked well with the next course of sashimi, especially some unctuously creamy pieces of squid - though not quite so well with the tuna toro which would, we felt, have probably been better with sake.

The next course was a rich seafood dumpling in a delicate white miso soup. Here the lighter wines showed better with the slightly glutinous casing of the dumpling and the fuller more rounded style of the Marquis Koshu (a 2009 tank sample) harmonised with the miso, showed off the rich seafood flavours of the filling and picked up with the umami-rich scattering of bonito flakes.

The wines struggled a little with the next dish, a savoury-sweet dish of sea bream ( I think) with pickles which again I think a sake would have taken better in its stride. The most successful pairing was again one of the fuller styles, the oak-aged Yamato 2009. It also created what I thought was the only discordant note of the meal - the combination with an intensely fruity almost Sauvignon-like wine (the Katsunuma Jyozo, I think) which was ironically the one that would have probably have paired best with a Western menu.

The savoury courses finished conventionally with a bowl of soup and rice but, needless to say, no ordinary soup, no ordinary rice: a fine dashi broth with some fine slivers of white fish and some delicately spiced rice topped with a steamed egg yolk, a tricky dish which defeated most of the wines except the 2007 Suntory barrique. (Actually it wasn’t dissimilar in texture to eggs benedict which also goes well with oaked whites.)

The meal ended with a red bean curd dessert with dumplings which the organisers wisely did not attempt to match with any of the wines.

So, the overall verdict? A meal of this sublime quality underlines that texture is as important as taste with Japanese food and the Koshu wines certainly respected that. Their crisp acidity worked particularly well with the raw and pickled dishes though there were some individual preparations I thought would have been better with sake - or vintage Champagne which I’ve found in the past goes really well with high-end Japanese cooking. The fuller-bodied, oaked Koshus came into their own with the richer dishes.

But there’s also an interesting cultural aspect at work here. I think a lot of people are going to be intrigued at the opportunity to drink Japanese wine in a Japanese restaurant and the fact that so many of the wines are modest in alcohol gives them an extra edge in these health-conscious times. (They would also go with lighter Western dishes). If the prices are reasonable I’m pretty sure they’ll take off.

* Kaiseke is the Japanese version of haute cuisine.

For more information about the wines check out the Koshu of Japan (KOJ) website
For Umu’s address, telephone number and menus visit their website (Prices for this level of cooking are actually very reasonable by Japanese standards)
For a good explanation of how kaiseki meals are structured read this piece on The Atlantic website

I attended the Umu lunch as a guest of Koshu of Japan.

Photo by Vinicius Benedit