Match of the week
Beenleigh Blue and Monbazillac
It’s not only Roquefort and Sauternes that pair well together, other sheeps cheeses and sweet wines match well too as I discovered at the Evening of Cheese event I hosted at The Butlers Arms in Sutton Coldfield on Sunday
It was a mammoth cheesefest with FOUR courses of cheese, followed by a tartiflette! The blues were Colston Basset Stilton and Beenleigh Blue, a salty, sheeps’ milk cheese from Ticklemore Cheese* in Devon which is modelled on (though paler and less veined than) a Roquefort.
The three options were a Portuguese red called Porta 6, a 2011 Domaine de Grangeneuve Monbazillac which is a Sauternes-style wine from near Bergerac just outside the Bordeaux region and a sloe gin (one of my favourite pairings for Stilton) but it was the delicate sweet Monbazillac that really shone with the Beenleigh Blue.
The other two outstanding pairings of the evening for me were a mature Montgomery cheddar with Lagunitas IPA and Stinking Bishop with Poire William (a pear-flavoured eau de vie). Stinking Bishop is washed in perry (pear cider) so that stood to reason.
* you can buy it from the Courtyard Dairy who were one of the sponsors of my cheese e-book, 101 Great Ways to Enjoy Cheese & Wine
Apricot soufflé and Coteaux du Layon
Why don’t more people make souffls these days? I include myself in that. They’re not that difficult, look so impressive and are such a lovely match for a dessert wine.
This was a pairing we enjoyed at the Auberge de Chassignolles in the Auvergne on our trip back through France last week. A final taste of summer before returning to what is turning out to be a premature, dreary, wet autumn.
The soufflés had a thin layer of fresh apricot purée at the bottom which echoed the rich apricotty tones of the wine, a Domaine des Sablonettes Fleurs d’Erables Coteaux du Layon 2008, a biodynamic wine from the Loire which was more evolved than you'd expect from a conventionally made wine.
To be honest I think any light to medium bodied dessert wine would work reasonably well, especially a Muscat or sweet Bordeaux. It’s a great way to show off a modest wine.
Foie gras and Sauternes
While I no longer eat foie gras myself (as explained here) for the French there is no other way to celebrate the réveillon, or New Year’s Eve.
Usually the foie gras is served cold, on its own or as a terrine and the lush, sweet lemon and honey flavours of the wine acts as a perfect counterpoint to the super-smooth texture and otherwise slightly cloying flavour of the foie gras.
Can you pull off the same trick with other dessert wines? To some extent yes. Other sweet Bordeaux such as Cadillac and Loupiac or sweet wines from around the Bordeaux region like Monbazillac are pretty good but they don’t have quite the intensity of Sauternes - or the impact when you put the bottle on the table. You can also partner foie gras with similar wines such as a late-harvest Semillon or Sauvignon.
The only downside is having to start a meal with a sweet wine which is not to everyone’s taste. An alternative would be to serve a mature reserve Chardonnay in which rich, buttery, caramelly notes have developed.
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