Radicchio, pickled pear and blue cheese salad and Le Bistro Montmija white

This crisp white wasn’t chosen as an exact match more like a wine I thought would run along with everyone’s starters when we went out to lunch at The Bull in Totnes last week

But I chose it as match of the week to illustrate that you don’t necessarily need to drink port or a sweet wine with blue cheese. The dish was a fresh-tasting salad of radicchio, pickled pears, walnuts and Beenleigh Blue (a local sheep cheese) in which the cheese was offset by the slight bitterness of the radicchio and sharpness of the pickled pears.

It needed an equally fresh fruity white and it got it in this inexpensive organic Languedoc wine which is a blend of grenache blanc, marsanne and sauvignon blanc.

You can buy it online from Vintage Roots for £8.99 and it would make a great party wine. (I like the red, which is a little soft, slightly less)

Cote Hill Blue and blackberry mead

It’s not often that food and drink that goes together perfectly turns up at exactly the same time but serendipitously I was sent a selection of delicious meads last week just as my order of blue cheese from The Courtyard Dairy arrived.

The combination I thought went best was Cote Blue, a gorgeous gooey unpasteurised Brie-style blue from Market Rasen in Lincolnshire with an absolutely delicious blackberry mead from a Welsh producer called Afon Mêl.

Obviously it followed the established pattern of pairing berry flavoured drinks with a blue but was a more unusual match than the usual port and stilton combination.

I haven’t been particularly taken with the meads I’ve tasted in the past, finding them too sweet and heavy but this was fresh, delicate and really moreish. I was thinking it would go well with a blackberry and apple crumble then found they suggested actually adding it to one which I imagine would be REALLY good.

The blue (which was perfectly matured - as always from Courtyard) was also stunning with a 2016 Prophet’s Rock pinot from their Home vineyard in New Zealand's Central Otago region but then what isn’t?

For other blue cheese pairings see What kind of wine goes with blue cheese?

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

Stichelton (or Stilton) with Maury 1974 and Bristol Beer Factory Glenlivet-cask stout

Two matches for the price of one this week - both killer pairings at our Christmas Cheese School* last week.

The Maury 1974 ( £19.49 for 50cl. Averys), a fortified grenache made in a solera system like sherry was perhaps the more obvious pairing for the Stichelton, an unpasteurised version of Stilton. It had a similar warm, spicy berry character to a vintage port but at 17% was a little lighter. Delicious.

On the other hand the Glenlivet Cask Stout, one of a limited edition bottling of stouts brought out for Christmas by the Bristol Beer Factory, was just as good. A wickedly rich, dark smooth 10.7% imperial stout with a lovely touch of sweetness it was the perfect contrast to the creamy Stichelton.

I really like the idea of finishing Christmas dinner with a beer like this but if you think your nearest and dearest will rebel buy yourself a good imperial stout this week and treat yourself.

* Cheese School is joint enterprise I set up with local Bristol cheesemakers and mongers Todd and Jess Trethowan to offer cheese-focused events and all day courses for those who want to learn more about cheese.