Dorset Blue Vinney and Bristol Supreme Sweet Sherry

This is the most interesting and original wine and cheese pairing of the four* I devised for my talks at the Bristol Wine and Food Fair over the weekend. I wanted to come up with a variation on the usual port and Stilton combo and this was it.

Dorset Blue Vinney, which was supplied by Chandos Deli in Bristol, is a lovely cheese that has been revived by Michael and Emily Davies at Woodbridge Farm in Dorset after falling into disuse (possibly because it is alleged that the cheese was originally blued by dunking old boots and bits of harness in the milk!) It’s creamier and less crumbly than a Stilton, slightly saltier - more like a Gorgonzola in taste and texture. A really delicious cheese.

With it I paired Avery’s Bristol Supreme Sweet Sherry, a gorgeous Spanish style oloroso sherry made for the company by one of the best sherry producers, Lustau, and an absolute snip at £7.29 for a full size bottle. Although it’s very sweet it’s not remotely cloying and the flavours - plump raisins, black treacle and Christmas cake - are so complex it makes the perfect foil for the cheese, one that you could accentuate by adding raisins, fresh Medjool dates, apricots and some grilled walnut bread to the cheese plate. One to remember for Christmas.

* The other pairings were Dorstone goats cheese with Avery’s Touraine Sauvignon Blanc, Berkswell sheeps’ cheese with 2001 Marques de Solariego Rioja Reserva and Keen’s Cheddar with Los Vascos Cabernet Sauvignon 2007 from Chile. All the wines came from Avery's and the cheeses from Trethowan's Dairy, both exhibitors at the show.

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Tiramisu and oxidised sweet wines

This doesn’t, I admit, sound a particularly tempting proposition so let me explain. By oxidised sweet wines I mean dessert wines which have been deliberately exposed to air through extended barrel ageing, giving them a complex nutty, treacley flavour.

The perfect example is a Corsican wine called Rappu from Domaine Gentile I tasted at Il Vino d’Enrico Bernardo, the wine bar in Paris I mentioned the other day which provides just the right dried fruit flavours to complement the coffee, cream and chocolate notes of a tiramisu. Other wines that would do a similar job would be a Rivesaltes vieux ambrée or an Italian or Greek Vin Santo.

Tiramisu is in fact a great foil for all kinds of interesting drinks. You could also pair it with an old sweet oloroso sherry, Bual Madeira or Moscatel, a hazelnut flavoured liqueur like Frangelico or a coffee-flavoured one like Kahlua. or simply follow it with an espresso coffee to echo the coffee notes and balance any excess sweetness.

Turron and sweet sherry

One of the nicest Christmas traditions I've picked up along the years is the Spanish habit of serving a platter of sweetmeats at the end of the meal or on other occasions when you want something sweet. It usually includes different kinds of turron, the Spanish version of nougat which comes in soft and hard versions, some with whole almonds, some without. To that you could add some polvorones (delicious almond cookies) large Moscatel raisins, figs and dates and even a few chocolate truffles if you like.

If you don't have a shop that sells authentic Spanish turron you can probably find French nougat (especially if you stop at a service station in the Rhône Valley as we did at the end of last week. I've never seen so much nougat in my life!)

With it I suggest you offer small glasses of genuine sweet oloroso sherry - my favourite being Gonzalez Byass Matusalem which is made from sherries that have an average age of 30 years. It's also wonderful with mince pies and Christmas cake and even as an alternative to port with stilton.

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Cave aged gruyère and dry oloroso

If I were to tell you I was seriously excited about the pairing of a supermarket sherry with a supermarket cheese you'd probably think I'd totally lost it - but hang on a moment.

The cheese is a cave-matured gruyère from Sainsbury's that has somehow survived 5 weeks in the wildly fluctuating temperatures of my domestic fridge and the sherry a bottle of Sainsbury's Taste the Difference 12 year old Dry Oloroso sherry - far cheaper than it has any rate to be at £6.99 a 50cl bottle. Made by Lustau it's wonderfully dark and nutty, like grilled hazelnuts with a piercing acidity that harmonises beautifully with the sharp crystalline cheese.

You should be able to pull off the same trick with any comparable dry oloroso and mature hard cheese - a great way to round off a meal.

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