Pairings

A Rabelaisian treat
«hecho a mano» №2(22) 2005

Today we open a series of Epicurean tastings of the most prominent world cuisines.

We enter a welcoming hall of a splendid Vivace restaurant where one can concentrate on search for fragile equilibrium between vintage wines and famous cheeses. At the table we have connoisseurs of French winemaking and cuisine who are ready to explain the finest nuances of the matches.

Three wines are chosen for today, each with a different biography.

The first is Dopff Au Moulin Riesling de Riquewihr 2001, Alsace AOC, a white semisweet wine produced in Alsace from Riesling grapes. Its impeccable quality featuring expressive fruity and floral aromas and light waxy notes on the palate, is confirmed by a few generations of tasters.

The second wine is Chateau Rol de Fombrauge 2000, St Emilion AOC, a red dry Bordeaux. A demanding expert can feel through typical Merlot flavours crispy freshness and a bouquet of ripe fruit (cherries), black berries and minerals.

The third is a wine of Chateau Lamothe Guignard 2000, Sauternes AOC, where dominating Semillon closes the spectrum of flavours for our tasting. An excellent balance of sweetness and acidity, intense apricot notes make it a worthy contender of the previous wines. But we are not looking for competition. We are in a search of harmony. Thus we will move to cheeses.

The first is a famous Roquefort, its rare Papillon (Black butterfly) variety, to be more precise, — one of the best blue cheeses in the world. It is known in France since 1666. The cheese is very crumbly, it should be cut with a hot knife. It melts in the mouth leaving a fascinating taste of rot and salt.

The second participant of our tasting is goats’ cheese Chevre Soignon. In contrast to Roquefort, it is strikingly straightforward and does not conceal its common origin even among the refined society. Young fresh cheeses can be sprinkled with black coal dust or covered in green leaves.

Number three is Brie Notre Dame, an old competitor of Roquefort. This is a soft cheese with dry rind and velvety white fungus. It also belongs to classic French cheeses and counts five centuries of history. With intense aromas and fine, sweetish, nutty taste.

Finally the fourth cheese, Trois Comtes (Three counts), traditionally made in Jura province. It is ready to challenge shepherd’s Chevre with its soft firmness. Yet this cheese, with its homogeneous, lightly yellow body, melting in the mouth and leaving a sweet aftertaste, does not conceal its aristocratic origin.

So, having gathered different characters and backgrounds at one table, will we be able to get a successful result in our search for harmony? Probably yes. It’s like in life where character and origin interact with each other and reinforce each other’s best qualities.

Brie Notre Dame
Dopff Au Mouline Riesling de Riquewihr. Not a bad couple. Cheese highlights mineral notes in the wine, but doesn’t change its taste.
Chateau Rol de Fombrauge. An excellent combination. Both wine and cheese keep their personalities, making a good neighbourhood.
Chateau Lamothe Guignard. Cheese dominates wine with its high fat content.

Trois Comtes
Dopff Au Mouline Riesling de Riquewihr. An ideal, a very well-balanced pairing. The cheese underlines waxy characters in the floral bouquet of wine.
Chateau Rol de Fombrauge. Cheese seems stronger than wine, but doesn’t distort it.
Chateau Lamothe Guignard. A surprisingly lovely match thanks to the creaminess of wine that complements the cheese.

Chevre Soignon
Dopff Au Mouline Riesling de Riquewihr. An acceptable combination, but wine makes cheese tarter.
Chateau Rol de Fombrauge. Here the tasters’ opinions differed. Some professionals thought it was not a successful marriage as cheese makes wine watery and strips off the fruit. The others, on the contrary, agreed on exceptional harmony — gentle character of cheese and spicy notes of wine tease the taste buds and whet the appetite.
Chateau Lamothe Guignard. An interesting couple. Both are strong partners, not losing in quality from each other’ presence.

Roquefort Papillon
Dopff Au Mouline Riesling de Riquewihr. The wine multiplies by three the salty taste of cheese, not the best combination. Chateau Rol de Fombrauge. Complete incompatibility. Wine disappears.
Chateau Lamothe Guignard. An eccentric match built on the contrasting flavours of saltiness and sweetness. Cheese dominates a bit, but the harmony of flavours is kept in both partners.

Majority of the tasters agreed that the most harmonious match is Comte and Riesling, and the most exciting — a classical combination of Roquefort Pappilon with sauternes. Yet it is impossible to reach a complete agreement on such an intimate question as wine and cheese. This is a Rabelaisian treat, and it should be tasted again and again.

Sergey Tashevsky, Eleonora Scholes, Stanislav Nikolsky, Alexandra Zelenina