Rainy Day Wine & Cheese Pairing
Wine & Soup Pairings
Starter courses such as soup create a lot of worry for people when it comes to wine pairings. Some people even suggest forgoing wine entirely, reserving it for the main course only. With soup, the difficulty cited most-often is texture: how to match a liquid with a liquid.
Below are some classic soup recipes with wine pairings.
Gazpacho Sauvignon Blanc
Chowders Pinot Grigio
Minestrone Red Zinfandel
Beef Stew Cabernet
White Wine Pairings
Chardonnay - Muravera
A fresh sheep’s milk product from Sardinia, Muravera is Sardoformaggi’s signature cheese. Soft in texture with a slightly tangy, lemony flavor, this cheese is best served with the meal, either before as an hors d’oeuvre, or after as part of a dessert course. It comes from mountainous northern Sardinia, which is an important fact because the southern part of the island gets very little rainfall, resulting in dry grasses for grazing and thus, less flavorful cheeses. The name Muravera comes from Mura - the name of Sardoformaggi’s founding family, and Vera - which means true.
Pinot Grigio - Vermont Classic Chevre
The Vermont Butter and Cheese Company story begins with this mild goat’s milk cheese. It was on a farm in Brittany where young Allison Hooper, working for room and board, learned the time-honored traditions of European artisanal cheesemaking. Working as a dairy lab technician in Vermont a few years later, she produced a chèvre for a banquet organized by Bob Reese, then marketing director of the state agriculture department. Chèvre was still largely unavailable in Vermont at the time – but not for much longer. Inspired by the response to her chèvre, Allison teamed up with Bob to found Vermont Butter & Cheese Company.Since then, Vermont Chèvre has earned an honored place among chefs and consumers alike. Distinguished by a simple, mild, fresh goat’s milk flavor, the cheese is highly versatile – an excellent ingredient in many dishes as well as on its own. While chèvre continues to grow in popularity, Vermont Chèvre maintains its reputation for quality through superlative taste, freshness, and lower salt.
Sauvignon Blanc - Marygold
Once again, Anna Van Dijk has created a startlingly different goat’s milk cheese. The base of this new cheese is a younger version of one of our favorites, Van Dijk; a tangy aged goat cheese. Made from the milk from her herd of 500 goats in Eindhoven, Holland, Anna has added a unique ingredient – marigold to this great cheese. Like Cornelia, Anna has achieved the perfect balance of flavors in her new concoction, Marygold. Marigold, also known as calendula or pot marigold, was a popular ingredient throughout medieval and renaissance Europe. In Holland, according to Gerard’s “Herbal”, “no broths are made well without dried marigolds.” Marigold gives color and a piquant touch to cheese, soups and stews. In fact, the petals were used to color cheese until annatto was introduced from America. The presence of marigold not only gives a slightly floral hint that complements the flavor of the cheese, but also creates a distinctive presentation with the creamy white color of the cheese sprinkled with orange and yellow flecks of petals. A must try for any lover of Dorothea or Van Dijk.
Riesling - Grafton Maple Smoked Cheddar Maple Smoked Cheddar is just one of the Grafton Village Cheese Company’s excellent cheeses. It is bathed in the cool smoke from smoldering hard maple wood for four to six hours at the end of the aging period. What taste could be more typical of Vermont? The smoke is used to season, not to preserve. It adds a delicious nuance reminiscent of bacon, and is an excellent part of any breakfast menu (try it in an omelet!) and on cocktail trays. We were so impressed by its quality that we honored Maple Smoked Cheddar from Grafton Village as our July 2002 Cheese-of-the-Month.
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