Top pairings | The best wine matches for Comté

Pairings | Savignin

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.

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Comments: 4 (Add)

rexeret on June 24 2020 at 14:14

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Neale on March 26 2019 at 22:35

March 26 2019 - I just bought an aged Comte from the Sunday market in the old town of Annecy and brought it home to the UK. It's going down very well with a Tuscan red from Val D'Orcia (Adone 2014) which is 70% Sangiovese & 30% Merlot

Fiona Beckett on July 4 2012 at 08:27

Thanks, Steve. There are so many interesting wine matches with Comté I hadn't got round to considering beer

Steve on July 3 2012 at 11:42

And in terms of beers try a porter or brown ale!

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