Difficult? Yes....Impossible? No #WinePW

Cheese and wine is a natural pairing, right?  Well, not always.  Sometimes those stinky cheeses that I love so much, Blue, Gorgonzola, Roquefort, etc. do not play well with wine.  They are too strong.  Don't get me wrong I still put at least one on my cheese platters when serving wine. I would just ignore that it wasn't wonderful.

So when Linda of My Full Wine Glass invited the members of Wine Pairing Weekend to join her in sharing Wine Pairings for Hard to Pair Foods my mind went immediately to this pairing.

I had never really given much thought to what wine I should be serving with blue cheese, mostly because it is usually just a component to the platter or foods I am serving. I went on a search to see what I could learn......

I found this article in Wine Folly that suggested pairings for foods that normally don't play well with wine.  The article spoke of why the foods and wines don't pair well and what wines you should serve if you still want to have wine with them.

I zeroed in on this section:

Blue Cheese 

Why It Doesn’t Work: While most cheeses pair easily with most wines, blue cheese and other blue-veined cheeses are difficult. This is most likely because the blue cheese has a high presence of a particularly odiferous aroma compound called alkan-2-ones which is also found in sphagnum swamp moss. Nummy. Ultimately, the stinky perfume of blue cheese overpowers most dry wines. 

Wines that Pair With Blue Cheese: Port Wine. You need an equally powerful sweet wine to counter balance blue cheese. One of the best pairings with blue cheese is Port wine. In this pairing, the earthy flavor of the cheese is cancelled out by the acidity of the wine and the creaminess of the cheese locks together with the sweetness of the wine creating a perfect pairing. Other great choices would be a bold, high alcohol Zinfandel, Shiraz or perhaps a sweet white dessert wine.

 

I love Blue Cheese. I am not a big fan of sweet wines.  However, this pairing made sense to me because cheese plates are often enjoyed for dessert.  I made a cheese plate up, grabbed a loaf of bread and sweet cream butter along with a bottle of Loupiac from France and headed out to the deck to enjoy while relaxing with a novel.

I had drizzled my blue cheese with honey and sprinkled some pecans on top.  Sliced up a french baguette and made some crostini.  I also put out some tomatoes in olive oil and balsamic, some fresh cherries and a bit of Boursin cheese.  

Loupiac is a sweet wine region in Bordeaux, France.  This wine is a blend of Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon.  It pours a rich, deep golden color and it tastes of fruit and honey.  It was PERFECT!!  I kept exclaiming to Frank, what a wonderful pairing this was....He wouldn't understand because he hates blue cheese.  

As I sat there enjoying this pairing I read the back of the bottle and started laughing right out loud.  Frank looked at me and I handed it over.  Right there, on this bottle that I have had for quite some time, is the statement that this wine is perfect with blue cheese.  Haha....Right under my nose and it took this event to make me aware of it.  Thanks Linda.

We are all gathering for Twitter chat tomorrow morning at 11 AM ET.  Join us following #WinePW to learn of other great wines to pair with difficult foods or to share with us a pairing that you have discovered.  Here are the topics we will be dicsussing......

• Wendy at A day in the Life on the Farm asks “Difficult? Yes….Impossible? No”
• Camilla at Culinary Adventures with Camilla goes for “Over the Top Taco Night: Pork Carnitas + 2012 Sokol Blosser Big Tree Block Pinot Noir”
• Andrea at The Quirky Cork is “Pairing Wine and Chocolate, Challenge Accepted!”
• Terri at Our Good Life has “Wines to Drink with Ramen”
• Deanna at Asian Test Kitchen advises “Keep Calm and Curry On with Mudgee Red Wines”
• Gwendolyn at Wine Predator gives us “A+ Pairings for Asparagus, Arugula, and Artichokes with organic wines from Alsace, Australia, Austria, and Argentina”
• Linda, your host, at My Full Wine Glass offers “Three wines for three ‘difficult’ foods”