What type of food pairs best with Brunello di Montalcino?

I always like to respond promptly if someone draws attention to a wine match that’s not available on the site so thanks, Nigel B of Hong Kong for pointing out there was nothing on Brunello di Montalcino.

I have to confess I don’t drink Brunello as often as I’d like (perhaps I should live in Hong Kong . . . ) but luck would have it I’d drafted something recently which I hope is a help.

“When asked what food suits their wines best Brunello producers will simply say ‘meat’ or ‘game’ by which they mean Tuscan-style as it wouldn’t occur to them there’s any other way to cook. As Claudia Roden put it in The Food of Italy Tuscans have always “liked natural foods undisguised by sauces and elaborate artifice.”

That said, Brunello is a great wine that deserves something substantial, a fine roast leg of lamb with rosemary, pot roast pheasant, roast squab with truffles or that most famous dish of all bistecca alla fiorentina, Tuscan-style steak, ideally sourced from the indigenous Chianina beef.

More rustic dishes such as Tuscan sausages and beans or pappardelle with wild boar (cinghiale) or hare (lepre) sauce would also work very well with younger Brunellos.

Cheese should be kept simple, especially with older vintages. Aged pecorino or parmesan would be ideal.”

If there’s any food, wine or other drink you can’t find a pairing for don’t hesitate to let me know.

Image by Gianni Crestani from Pixabay

What wine - and other drinks - to pair with cheesecake

The most useful clue to the kind of wine that works with cheesecake is to think of the toppings and flavourings that are used in cheesecake recipes rather than the base.

You also need to take into consideration what type of cheesecake you’re dealing with - a classic New York cheesecake or a light, ricotta-based one (I’ll leave savoury cheesecakes for the moment)

Beer and spirits or liqueurs may be as good as wine. Nigella for example has an apple cheesecake with butterscotch sauce in her book Feast that is made with apple schnapps and suggests drinking the same liqueur with it. Here are some other ideas:

Plain cheesecake

Sweet riesling or a late harvest sauvignon blanc are pretty reliable choices

Honey cheesecake

A great discovery last year at Honey & Co - a marvellous pairing of Canadian Vidal ice wine and honey and feta cheesecake I made my match of the week.

Lemon or orange cheesecake

Lemon is always a bit tricky because it tends to knock the lemony flavour out of any accompanying wine. If the lemon’s not too pronounced - say in an Italian-style ricotta cheesecake - try a moscato d’Asti or an 'extra dry' (ironically medium-sweet) prosecco. If it’s more powerful try an icewine again shot of well chilled limoncello. With orange-flavoured cheesecake an orange muscat like Andrew Quady's Essensia would be better.

Berry - and cherry - topped cheesecake

Again late harvest riesling will probably cope but to be honest I prefer Belgian-style raspberry or cherry beers. I suspect also that the Cabernet Franc ice wine I found such a good match a couple of years ago for a rhubarb cheesecake would work with a raspberry or strawberry-topped cheesecake too.

Toffee, caramel or maple-flavoured cheesecake

If you like this style of cheesecake you almost certainly have a sweet tooth so a Australian-style ‘sticky’ liqueur muscat would probably suit you down to the ground. A glass of tawny port would be a slightly drier option. For a pumpkin cheesecake I’d go for something a bit lighter - a muscat or moscatel like Torres’ Floralis Moscatel Oro, for example.

Chocolate cheesecake

Sweet red wines generally work with chocolate and cheesecake is no exception though you might be able to get away with a lush dry red as I did in this surprising match. I suspect one of the new wave of sweet reds like Apothik would work too. Having less of a sweet tooth I’d personally go for a madeira or an oloroso sherry - also a good match, I reckon, for a Nutella cheesecake.

The best wine matches for Comté

After a recent visit to the Jura I've rethought my ideas about which wines make the best wine pairings for Comté cheese.

We were guided through a tasting by flavour analyst Claire Perrot who suggested a couple of matches I wouldn’t have thought of - Champagne and Alsace Pinot Noir. And since then I've been back and tried a couple more (see my update below)

Comté is France’s most popular AOP (Appellation d’Origine Protégée) cheese by a significant margin selling about twice as much as its nearest rival Roquefort.

It’s a cooked pressed Gruyère style cheese which in fact used to be referred to as Gruyère de Comté. Individual wheels vary hugely though I found them in general more caramelly, nuttier and slightly less salty than Gruyère but less fruity than Beaufort though there will obviously be differences between winter and summer cheeses - summer cheeses being fuller-flavoured than winter ones.

The French tend to eat Comté fairly young which makes it an unchallenging partner to a wide range of wines including reds. Once it’s older, nuttier and more intense you may want to veer towards whites or some of the other suggestions below:

Local dry Arbois whites
The classic local terroir-based match. Most of the ones I tasted were a blend of Chardonnay and the local Savagnin grape which gives the wines a nutty, slightly earthy, mineral character which chimes in perfectly with the cheese. I suspect old Muscadet, which I've been tasting recently, would work well too.

Vin Jaune
Arbois’ distinctive sherry-style white is a fantastic match for 12-18 month Comtés. And on that basis so is ...

Dry(ish) sherry
Amontillado and palo cortado being the two wines recommended by the Comté website although since I’ve successfully paired dry oloroso with Gruyère I suspect it would work well with Comté too. (Sherry is more sympathetic to Comté than port, I think.)

Champagne
The big surprise. I tasted a biodynamic Champagne from Lassaigne, les Vignes de Montgueux, which was just delicious with a 15 month old winter Comté. Vintage Champagne I suspect would be fantastic with older Comtés still.

Aged or minerally Chardonnays
On the basis that Arbois wines containing Chardonnay work well others should too, particularly mature Chablis and other mature Chardonnays such as this one from Kistler that struck gold with a 56 month Comté. You wouldn’t want the oak influence to be too pronounced though.

Old white Bordeaux - an 18 year old Domaine de Chevalier Pessac-Léognan was stunning with both 2 and 4 year old Comtés at a tasting I did with affineur Bernard Antony a few years ago.

Alsace Pinot Noir
I really liked a 5 year old 2006 Schueller Pinot Noir with a fresh, milky six month old Comté but the local Poulsard grape works well too

Mature - and immature but not overoaked - Languedoc reds . . .
A surprise perhaps but I’ve drunk Languedoc Syrah - young and old - successfully with youngish Comté.

. . . and mature Spanish reds
I've had striking success with a 9 month old Comté and an 8 year old Navarra red from Chivite. Mature Rioja reservas and gran reservas of course, should work too.

So a number of different possibilities which indicates that Comté is a pretty easy-going cheese which earns its place on a cheeseboard. The common factor in the most successful pairings however seems to be age. Mature wines seem to work particularly well. The wines I’d hesitate to pair with it are high alcohol new world reds with a lot of jammy fruit and intensely herbaceous whites like New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc which I don’t think would work as well. I don’t think rosé does Comté many favours either.

September 2015. On my latest visit to Fort des Rousses I discovered two other really good pairings for a full-flavoured 3 year old Comté Juraflore: a 2002 vin de paille and a MacVin du Jura, a curious blend of savagnin juice and must and brandy which tastes like a cross between a dessert wine, a grappa and a whisky!

Image © bluesky6867

Food pairings for wheat beer II - hefeweizen, dunkelweizen and other German-style wheat beers

German wheat beers are sufficiently different from Belgian wheat beers to merit a separate post - so what are the best food matches for hefeweizen with their striking banana and clove flavours?

Of course some of the same pairings will work but in my view hefeweizen are better with richer, sweeter seafood dishes and pork than witbier. They’re also less spicy so less good with the citrus and herb flavours that work so well with witbiers.

Hefeweizen such as Schneider Weisse and Franziskaner

Weisswurst and pretzels - THE classic south German breakfast pairing

Any kind of cured pork: sausages with potato salad, smokey hams - and the accompanying pickles

Roast chicken or pork

Fried chicken or veal (wiener schnitzel)

Chicken caesar salad

Richer seafood such as scallops and lobster (I’m betting lobster rolls are particularly good)

Hot smoked salmon and sautéed salmon

Chicken-based Tex Mex dishes like burritos

Apple tarts and turnovers

Mark Dredge suggests banana cake and roast banana in his book Craft Beer World. And Saveur comes up with this recipe for banana pudding which I must say I like the look of.

Dunkelweizen

Some of the above pairings will work with the richer, malty flavours of dunkelweizen but I would put more emphasis on:

Smoked ham and bacon

American-style BBQ

Mole (the Mexican dish not a small furry creature)

Fried chicken, veal or pork with a tomato and pepper sauce

Matured cheeses such as Gouda and Parmesan

If you found this article useful take a look at my post on matching witbiers. And there’s a useful article by beer writer Ben McFarland here on matching wheat beers. Quoting yours truly, as it happens . . .

Image by Wolf-Henry Dreblow from Pixabay