Match of the week
Camembeso cheese and Ribera del Duero
I’m an ardent advocate of pairing cheese with white wine so it came as a bit of a surprise just how well the Spanish cheeses I was eating over the weekend went with the full-bodied Ribera del Duero wines I was tasting, many of which were over 14.5%
The cheese was a new one on me, a Camembeso from Quesos & Besos in the Sierra Morena in Andalucia, a gloriously silky goats cheese which I suspect had been partly coagulated or set with thistle extract as is common among artisanal cheeses in Spain. The distinctive shape is designed to represent lips - ‘Quesos y Besos’ means cheese and kisses!
You can’t find out much about it online because every time you look up Camembeso Google assumes you mean Camembert
It went with most of the wines I paired it with other than the most modern, sweetly fruited ones and was just glorious with them
You can order it, as I did, from specialist importer Mevalco for £6.50 - [a perfect sharing size for 2 cheese fanatics’, as the catalogue puts it). Mevalco stocks other excellent Spanish cheeses and Spanish charcuterie too: the Gomez Moreno Rosemary Manchego is also delicious.
I paid for the cheese and received the Ribera wines as a sample
Beetroot and goat cheese macarons with a pet nat rosé
In a week of pretty amazing wine pairings (it’s not every day you get to taste five different vintages of Harlan Estate* over dinner) there was one really interesting match I wouldn’t have predicted - and that’s what this weekly slot is all about.
It was at a new(ish) restaurant called Osip in Bruton I’ll be writing about shortly and was with one of the initial snacks of the set price menu: beetroot and goat cheese macarons. Not having a particularly sweet tooth I’m not generally big fan of macarons but these were satisfyingly savoury with a really good beetroot flavour which chimed in perfectly with the Les Quatre Pétillant rosé brut nature we’d ordered as an aperitif.
Although it’s made from southern grapes - grenache, syrah and carignan - it’s produced in the Loire and is available from Uncharted Wines for £18.89. I particularly like the explanation on the label: “The Les Quatre philosophy is to make the best wines possible with a style they like to call ‘Paris Wine Bar’. We take that to mean totally drinkable, accessible and fun, all whilst being brilliantly made.”
That’s totally true.
See also The best wines to pair with beetroot
* It only didn't make Match of the Week because it was paired, fairly conventionally with a fillet steak!
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