Montgomery's Cheddar from Neal's Yard

About a month ago I ate Wensleydale cheese from Neal's Yard and loved it, and most callously called it a Cheddar, which in fact it is not. Bronwen Percival, the cheese buyer at Neal's Yard, discussed this at the end of the post in her comments. Bronwen knows about a lot about cheese, which is kind of like saying that Stephen Hawking knows a lot about physics.

Well, it's been a long time coming, but I finally tasted the mack-daddy of cloth bound Cheddars, the king, if you will. I speak of Montgomery's Cheddar from Neal's Yard.This is a raw milk cheese that is aged for at least one year. I think Neal's Yard's description of the cheese is right on:

Rich, sweet, fruity, nutty, beefy flavours. Sometimes reminiscent of the caramelised edge of a Sunday roast. The texture is drier than most other cheddars with a grainy and crystalline crunch as it ages.

A friend and I enjoyed this cheese alongside a piece of Wensleydale the other night. Eating them together provided, for me anyway, a clear definition of Cheddar. Wensleydale shows some moistness at room temperature, and tastes of butter, cream, and grass. Montgomery's is more golden in color, harder and crumblier, and much different in flavor. As the above tasting note indicates, the flavors here are more savory. Both cheeses are wonderful, and I have no favorite. This might sound odd, but there is something about Wensleydale that makes me think of it as a morning cheese, and Montgomery's is for afternoon or night time. That said, breakfast this morning was Montgomery's on a slice of 7-grain and it was absurdly delicious.

Sadly, at breakfast I did not indulge in the beverage pairing that my friend and I did when eating this cheese the other night. We drank N.V. Bodegas Hidalgo Jerez-Xérès-Sherry Manzanilla Pasada Pastrana, $24, Imported by Classical Wines. Pastrana is a very special wine, a single vineyard barrel-aged Manzanilla that offers all of the briskness and sea salt one would expect from a good Manzanilla, but also shows an amazing depth, intensity, and complexity that for me elevates it above most Manzanillas.

Now, we had some wine with dinner before we arrived at cloth bound and Sherry, and I wasn't taking notes. I love this Sherry, but I think I might prefer to drink a dark beer with Montgomery's. Somehow the flavors of the Sherry and the cheese competed with instead of elevating one another. I love Pastrana with cheese, but I've had it only with aged goat cheeses. Perhaps it's not the best pairing with the king of Cheddars. Perhaps I should have tried them together again at breakfast. One day when I'm retired I'll do things like that.

Will the Real Cloth Bound Cheddar Please Stand Up.

Ever since I read about cloth bound cheddar in The Art of Eating I knew that I had to try some. I've had one or two now and not found anything to love. And then the other day we tried some Wensleydale made for Neal's Yard. This without question is the finest Cheddar I've ever had. Nothing comes close.

Wensleydale is made by a large producer, but this cheese is made specially for Neal's Yard, and it is old school cloth bound farmhouse Cheddar. The cheese is just delicious. It is moist but not entirely so, and also a bit crumbly. It tastes of grass and fresh cream and is beautifully balanced. I love the subtlety of this cheese - it is gentle and quiet, but it really lingers. I enjoyed imagining eating it in an inn somewhere in rural England, perhaps The Slaughtered Lamb from American Werewolf in London, perhaps with a hunk of bread and a glass of something. It is smooth and creamy and very difficult to stop eating.

We tried grating this cheese into scrambled eggs - very nice. We tried melting on bread - excellent. But the best way to eat it, I think, is simply to slice it and eat it on its own. We did this a little while back, some good whole grain bread, and a simple salad on the side.

What to drink with a cheese like this? There were all sorts of good suggestions the last time I wrote about cloth bound Cheddar. We drank beer this time, specifically stout, and it was perfect. Samuel Smith's Oatmeal Stout, to be exact. The sweet and slightly bitter taste of the almost black beer played beautifully with the creamy smooth cheese. I'm telling you, the combination of this just slightly effervescent dark beer with the Wensleydale is dangerous.

Wine and Cheese - Lazy Lady Fil-A-Buster and Pinot Blanc

Lazy Lady Farm in Vermont is Laini Fondiller's life's work. Located in Westfield Vermont, not far from the Canadian Border, Fondiller's farm is off-the-grid. Yes, that means that the electricity that is used on the farm is generated by solar panel and wind generators. Fondiller does mostly everything herself, from milking to washing the rinds. Her's is an interesting story, and NY Times Magazine recently ran a story on her.

That and $2.25 gets you a ride on the subway. Call me cynical, if you like, but none of that makes any difference to me if Lazy lady cheeses don't taste good. I respect and admire her commitment to minimal impact farming, and that she generates her own power and feeds the byproducts of her cheese-making to raise pigs - those are great things to do, things to aspire to. But I still want the cheese to taste good if I'm going to buy it.

The good news is that the cheeses taste great. The one's I've had, anyway. My favorite so far is probably the deliciously creamy Lady in Blue, a blue cheese that is more fruity and creamy than salty. The other day I saw a Lazy Lady cheese that I'd not seen before (Fondiller's cheeses are seasonal, of course, as is cow and goat milk in Vermont), something called Fil-A-Buster. I figured it would be a fitting cheese to eat this weekend as the ladies and gents in Warsh-ington had it out over the health care bill.

Fil-A-Buster is a raw cow's milk washed rind cheese that's available from January through May. It is similar to a legendary cheese from the Jura called Vacherin Mont D'Or, in that the cheese wheel is bound with a resiny and aromatic strip of spruce bark. But Fil-A-Buster must be aged for at least 60 days, as we are complete prudes about the bacteria in raw milk over here. Vacherin is made in smaller wheels and is a runny gooey mess of deliciousness.

Fil-A-Buster is a wonderful cheese that needs to be serves at room temperature in order to reveal its full flavor. Please don't eat around the rind if you try this cheese - the rind makes the whole thing so special. The creamy texture becomes pleasantly grainy with the rind, and the clean milky flavors take on nutty tones, particularly the somewhat bitter skins of fresh walnuts. The resiny spruce aroma lingers after swallowing.

The spruce bark takes on quite a gnarly appearance after 2 months in a cheese cave.

We ate this cheese with the 2007 Laurent Barth Alsace Pinot Blanc, $14, Louis/Dressner Selections. This is an excellent wine, and a great value at this price. It is a thing of liquid rock - the aromas are wet rock and limestone and more rock. Almost painful in its piercing mineral focus, but with an hour it relaxes a bit and shows a gentle undercurrent of honey and something like eucalyptus. It's well balanced and lively, and honestly has nothing to do with those round and blowsy Pinot Blanc wines that are common. It seems to be much more about place than about Pinot Blanc, which I think is a good thing. Although it doesn't have the depth and complexity of Dirler's Pinot Blanc, it's also less than half the price.


That said, I wish that I had opened a bottle of Jura wine with this cheese, something made in the intentionally oxidized style. The rich nutty character of a wine like that would have been an even better partner for this cheese. The Barth Pinot Blanc is great, but might be a better match for younger fresher cheeses, or perhaps with something like weisswurst and sauerkraut.

Fondue

It was my friend Deetrane's birthday the other night. He celebrated by making several pots of fondue and inviting family and a few friends. Deetrane's parents have a condo in Chamonix, France, right near the border of Switzerland. He's been going there since he was a kid, and so he's quite familiar with the ritual of a fondue dinner.

We began with an excellent plate of charcuterie.

Then came the fondue. Deetrane uses white wine, slivovitz, or plum brandy, and nutmeg, in addition to Gruyère cheese. The slivovitz acts as an anti-coagulant. Bowls of dried, but not stale bread are passed around.

You skewer a piece with the fondue fork and swish it through the pot. But be careful - anyone who loses their bread in the pot must pay a dollar to get it back. In the end, the dinner cost me about $4, which is clearly a bargain.

Before the dinner, I poked around the interweb looking for fondue wine pairing suggestions. I kept reading about "neutral dry white wines," which I guess made sense, but also seemed kind of boring. In the end I decided on two wines that are from the part of France that borders Switzerland, Savoie and the Jura. The 2008 Eugene Carrel Savoie Jongieux, $11, Martin Scott Imports, was perfectly fine and I think most people preferred it to the other wine I brought, the fantastic 2005 Puffeney Arbois Melon-Queue-Rouge, $25, Neal Rosenthal Selections.

Melon-Queue-Rouge is a grape that is uncommon even in the wine-geeky Jura world. I've had only a few, and this one, Puffeney's, was far and away my favorite. Deep golden yellow, with rich oxidative nutty notes on the nose and palate, and vibrant acidity, I thought this wine was a great partner to the fondue.

Deetrane very generously opened some big-shot bottles of red Burgundy too, including 1997 Simon Bize Latricières-Chambertin, 1996 Dominique Laurent Nuits St. George 1er Cru Les Chaignots, 1999 Michel Lafarge Volnay, and a Corton whose identity I have forgotten. It's weird - the reds didn't show as well as we had hoped. As Deetrane said afterwards, "maybe they just didn't get along with the fondue." Maybe the brawny Melon-Queue-Rouge ruined our palates for the delicacy of mature Burgundy. They do drink reds before these oxidative wines in the Jura.

In any case, it was a great night and we were so glad to be a part of it - happy birthday Deetrane!

Wine and Cheese - Hudson Red with Chidaine Montlouis

There are some great cheeses produced in New York and Vermont. Local cheeses have achieved, in my opinion, higher quality within the cheese world than local wines have within the wine world. One of my new favorites is a raw milk washed rind cheese called Hudson Red, made by Twin Maple Farms Creamery and distributed by the ersatz coop Pampered Cow Cheese.

Hudson Red is not the stinkiest of washed rind cheeses, but it's not tame. Fresh and grassy with a creamy texture, and a pungent finish, this cheese had character. And it's completely delicious.

I like highly aromatic wines with washed rind cheeses - Gewurz or Muscat perhaps, but Hudson Red is on the mellow side of the washed rind spectrum. We've had this cheese several times now and I have yet to find "the right wine." No calamities, but nothing inspiring either. When I thought about eating it this time, I imagined it pairing well with a demi-sec Chenin Blanc, and so we went with one of François Chidaine's wines.

2005 François Chidaine Montlouis sur Loire Les Tuffeaux, $23, Louis/Dressner Selections. In a great place right now, this seems to have shed most of its sweet and tender baby fat. Still decidedly an off-dry wine, but the residual sugar is less prominent than it was a few years ago. The wine has achieved a better balance now, and some how seems fresher than it did a while back. Numbers say the wine is still young, but the intensely woolly notes suggest something a bit more mature to me (wool in background of photo represents woolly tones - ed.) I think this wine has his a comfortable stride - it's drinking beautifully right now. I have only one bottle left, and I might try to hold it for a while, but if I had several of these I wouldn't hesitate to open one soon.

That said, the pairing with Hudson Red was merely good, not great. The woolly, green tea, roast nuts of the wine played alongside, not with the cheese. This wine might have done better with a young chalky goat cheese from the Loire Valley. And I'm still unsure of the perfect wine for the lovely Hudson Red.

A Night of Pierre Gonon

The other night my friend Adam invited a couple of people to his place for a night of wines from Pierre Gonon, the decidedly old school producer from St. Joseph. I don't drink a lot of northern Rhône wine because there are so few that I can afford that are also appealing to me. So many of them are simply way too big - high alcohol, overripe wines with Sour Patch Kid type acidity, wines that I have a hard time enjoying with food. Gonon is a producer whose wines are delicious, true to the place they come from, and entirely affordable. Cheap, I would venture to say, especially considering the quality they offer.

The Pierre Gonon estate, now run by Pierre's sons Jean and Pierre, is a small estate with plots in several villages, but perhaps the most important plot is in Les Oliviers, a steep vineyard with southern exposition. Pierre Gonon planted his family's white grape vines there in the late '50s. And with the exception of wines that are literally 4 or 5 times the price, Gonon's white is the best white Rhône wine I've had (relatively small sample size, but work with me, people).

I've had two vintages of the St. Joseph rouge (2006, 2007) and the thing that always strikes me when I drink these wines is the absolute clarity of their expression. It's like smelling and drinking a textbook definition of Rhône Syrah: meaty, olive-y, deeply fruited, and peppery, floral hints in the background. These are wines of great intensity and depth, but not of great weight. They are bold wines that show the gamy richness and full texture one expects from Syrah, but in an unadorned and elegant style. From what I understand, they age gracefully, too, something that I will test out myself, quite eagerly. And this wine costs about $28 before case discounts.

We began our evening with the 2007 Pierre Gonon St. Joseph Blanc Les Oliviers, Fruit of the Vines Imports, $32. I love this wine - I LOVE it. A typical blend at 80% Marsanne and 20% Roussanne, but atypical in its freshness, elegance, and energetic character. The aromatics are just beautiful, with fresh pears, orange peel, honeycomb and a touch of something like nutmeg. It is an enticing nose that mellows and becomes more and more clear as the wine warms up. There is not a lot of acidity here, but the wine feels energetic and fresh on the palate, and the finish is long with pears and spiced honey. The wine is bone dry at 13.8 % alcohol. I would gladly drink this wine with roast pork or chicken, with rich shellfish like lobster, with almost enything you might throw at it. We came back to it at the end of the evening over a plate of cheeses, and it was particularly great with a washed rind goat cheese called Le Petit Fiancé des Pyrénées. The wine was at room temperature, and its mellow pear fruit and waxy honeyed richness complemented the grassy pungency of this delicious cheese. I love the way this wine interacts with cheese, and I've served it before with good effect.
A reader who goes by 'michelecolline' recently left a comment saying "You keep eating Italian dishes with French wine....you making me crazy!" Well Michele, I've done it again. Adam cooked his version of sausage and peppers, topped with grated Parmesan cheese and gremolata, and we opened three of Gonon's reds. The 2007 Pierre Gonon Vin de Pays de l'Ardèche Les Iles Feray, $17, comes from young vines in St. Joseph and older vines just outside the AOC. The aromatics are bright with red fruit and flowers, and the sauvage notes that were so pungent about 6 months ago are less pronounced now. This wine showed so well the other night, balanced, juicy, and just delicious, and at 12.5% alcohol.

The 2007 Pierre Gonon St. Joseph, $28, is just a great wine. It was at its best after a few hours of air, at the very last sip. Perfectly harmonious, and that's saying something because this is a brawny wine. The fruit is dark blue and bright red and feels like it came from tiny berries. At first the acidity was a bit rough, but when the wine comes together the fruit mingles with lavendar and bloody meat in a deeply satisfying way, and the acidity is more of a support than a major player. This is a wine that deserves to survive the next decade in the cellar so it can reveal all of its charms.
We saved the best for last. Adam opened a bottle of 20 year old wine, the 1989 Pierre Gonon St. Joseph. I was so excited to drink this - anticipating it all day. And so of course it was viciously corked. Another time, 1989, you and I will meet again.

Lot 2 - a Restaurant that's Worth the Trip

The other night a friend and I went to Lot 2, a new-ish restaurant in a very quiet (read - middle of nowhere) part of Brooklyn. I love this area, actually, the stretch of 6th avenue between the Gowanus expressway and Greenwood Cemetery. Disingenuous realtors call this the South Slope, but I think Greenwood Heights is more accurate. Anyway, this is a quiet residential stretch of town. There is a public school, a few bodegas, a furniture design store, a coffee house, and not a lot else - nothing that inspires a special trip. There used to be a destination-worthy BBQ place on 20th and 6th, but it closed last year. Now, in the storefront right next door, Lot 2 is open. And it's worth a special trip.

Here are some things you will NOT find at Lot 2:

• A bartender sporting a little mustache and arm garters who looks like he stepped out of a 1890's saloon.
• A discourse on butchering technique.
• Anything that has been "deconstructed," any kind of "foam," or "gelée."
• Attitude of any kind.

Not that there is anything wrong with those things - I enjoy them from time to time. But Lot 2 isn't about pretension or culinary pyrotechnics. Lot 2 is about excellent ingredients and simple but highly skilled preparation. The servers are very kind and competent, the space is attractive and homey, and the prices are reasonable. If none of this sounds special enough to make Lot 2 a destination, there is one other thing that might sway you: the incredibly high quality of the charcuterie. Lot 2 was opened by the guy who did the charcuterie at Grammercy Tavern, and charcuterie should be part of a meal at Lot 2. They also demonstrate a deft hand with pickles.

We couldn't decide on appetizers (called small lots) because we wanted to taste them all. So we did, almost. We began with the pork jowl, and this was utterly fantastic, the best plate of food I have been served at a restaurant in a while (grain of salt - I don't go out that much). Think of that ubiquitous pork belly, in terms of presentation - a large square of meat with a ribbon of crusty fat on top. But this is jowl, and the meat is meatier than a belly cut. The accompanying Brussels sprouts were very good, and there were little pancetta croutons, as if the jowl might not be porky enough. It is this dish that will make me walk all the way down to 20th street on a snowy night in January.

We also had cured lamb neck and cured pork neck served with house pickles and warm olives. The paper-thin slices of meat were subtly perfumed with spices, and although both were rich and delicious, we preferred the lamb. And because pork jowl and two kinds of neck really aren't enough in the way of charcuterie, we also had the lardo bread, a piece of crusty bread smeared with lardo butter and topped with Brussels sprouts leaves. This was the only thing we ate at Lot 2 that wasn't so great, and I suppose the owners felt the same way, as I notice that it is no longer on the menu. Although lardo still appears with the potato skins that come alongside the burger, in what I am sure is a winning combination.

We tried two salads, and both were excellent. Shaved fennel with radishes and walnuts was a perfect rendition of this dish, and it was a great companion to the charcuterie. My friend Clarke and I were essentially jousting with our forks over the last bites. Chicory with pickled pumpkin was also delicious - bitter greens with sweet and sour pickles, very refreshing. We enjoyed this salad with the one entree (called big lots) we had, itself a story. Let me tell you how difficult it was not to order the lamb ribs with chickpeas, olives, mint and lemon. But we ate the better part of a pig to begin the meal, and it just seemed excessive. So we ordered pasta - garganelli with cauliflower, mint, capers, and romanescu. As Clarke said, "This dish has no business being this good." It was delicious, truly. Garganelli are kind of like large penne with deeper striations to hold the sauce. The seasonings were perfectly balanced and there was a spark from red chili flakes, but it is the texture of this dish that really got me. The pasta (which I think may be home-made) was cooked until just tender, and the whole dish was tossed with toasted bread crumbs, which gave every bite just the slightest gritty crunch. A real winner, this dish.

And what about the wine list? It is small, but filled with interesting and inexpensive bottles that would be great to drink with this food. Savio Soares has a few wines on the list (Mouressipe from the Languedoc, Marcillet from Savigny-Les-Beaune, Héaulé from the Loire). Jeffrey Alpert has two fantastic wines here - the beautiful NV Benoît Lahaye Champagne Brut, mostly Pinot Noir from Bouzy, and fairly priced at $72, and the ethereal and gamy 2006 Ganevat Trousseau "Plein Sud" at $55. There are several interesting Italian wines too - you can see the list here. We decanted and drank the Ganevat Trousseau, and its progression from horse stable to rose garden with rabbits was perfectly harmonious with our food. If you are a beer person, they have several interesting craft brews too.

We ended our meal with two cheeses, both from Jasper Hill Farms. Bayley Hazen is their excellent Stilton-esque blue cheese, and the cloth-bound Cheddar made by Cabot Creamery and aged in the cellars at Jasper Hill. I still don't like the cloth-bound Cheddar. I didn't like it the first time I had it, and I've had it several times since then and I just don't get it. But that's just me - it is a high quality cheese that everyone else loves, so trust me, everyone else is probably right.

Lot 2 is well worth the trip. Go with a friend, go on a date, go for communal Sunday supper. Go check it out.

Lot 2
687 6th Avenue (near 20th street), Brooklyn.
718.499.5623

By the Glass - Domestic Cheese Edition

We've been delving further into domestic cheeses lately with some very good results, mostly. It continues to fascinate me, the challenge of pairing wine with cheese. In my opinion, which in this case is even less well informed than most of my other opinions, red wine is just too difficult to pair with cheese. They both tend to have such powerful aspirations, how can they avoid doing battle with one another? I find myself wanting to drink whites with cheese, the only question being whether or not the wine should have residual sugar. We've tried the cheeses I mention below several times, with various wines. Here are a few recent pairings that worked. Please feel free to chime in with any suggestions of your own.

Jasper Hill Farm Bayley Hazen Blue Cheese, paired with 2002 Domaine du Closel Savennières Moëlleux Les Coteaux, $28, Louis/Dressner Selections. Jasper Hill Farm might be the last great hope for artisanal cheese in Vermont. Mateo and Andy Kehler raise their own cows and make their own cheeses, but they also cellar small-batch cheeses made by other dairy farmers, including the famous Cabot's Cloth Bound Cheddar. Their Bayley Hazen Blue is a raw milk cheese that's aged for at least four months, and it is distinguished by its great balance. Not too salty, not too sweet, this cheese tastes of fresh butter, with herbs and roast nuts. It is crumbly and dense, not creamy like St. Agur. There are many wines that would be great with this cheese, but after one nibble, I knew that I wanted something sweet. The wines of the Savennières appellation are typically dry, but in 2002 the Domaine du Closel made a sweet wine. It was a great match, the herbal flavors of the wine enhancing the same flavors in the cheese. The rich, somewhat viscous texture of the wine enhancing the cheese's lean and sprightly characteristics. I've had this wine as an apértif in the past year, and it was far better with cheese than it was on its own.

Jasper Hill Constant Bliss, paired with 2007 Paul Pernot Bourgogne Blanc, $18, Jean-Marie de Champs Selections. This is a Chaource-style (in the Champagne region) cow's milk cheese. It is aged longer than Chaource cheeses (thank you, flavorful bacteria-averse FDA regulations), and the Jasper Hills folks say that it doesn't really resemble the cheeses of Chaource. This is delicious cheese, plain and simple. The best wine pairing I've found so far is the fabulously over-achieving everyday Bourgogne by Paul Pernot, which in the classic vintage of 2007 manages to be both lighthearted and serious. It shows hints of everything that makes white Burgundy wine so great - ripe fruit, delicate floral and stony aromas, and inner layers of texture that fade in and out.

Scholten Family Farms Weybridge, paired with 2007 Agnès et René Mosse Anjou Blanc, $18, Louis/Dressner Selections. This cheese is aged at the Cellars at Jasper Hill. It is a pasteurized cow's milk cheese with a bloomy rind, aged for 20-30 days. It quite sensibly ripens from the outside in, offering a lovely contrast between the creamy outer layer and the more chalky inner paste. I found the texture to be the most interesting thing about this cheese. The flavors are nice too, but more simple. The Mosse Anjou Blanc was nice here, its earthy and woolly notes adding complexity that I found the cheese to lack. Somehow, though, the wine showed almost no acidity when paired with the cheese. Strange...

Meadow Creek Dairy Grayson, paried with 2006 Pierre Frick Sylvaner Cuvée Classique, $13, Fruit of the Vines Imports. This is a raw milk washed rind cheese from the mountains of south-western Virginia, made somewhat in the style of the classic Italian Taleggio. Meadow Creek Dairy practices an earth-friendly form of cattle farming and cheese making. I have no data to back this up, but I hereby assert that Meadow Creek dairy is partially responsible for the fact that in the recent Presidential election, the great state of Virginia voted Democratic for the first time since 1964. In any case, this is delicious cheese. It is not a runny washed rind cheese, it retains its bouncy form even after several hours at room temperature. It is pungent, but not at all overpowering, with grassy and fruity flavors. Better to cut around the rind though, in my opinion, as it offers little to no flavor, and it adds an unpleasant brittle, waxy texture. Frick's bone-dry Sylvaner is great with this cheese. The floral aromas bookend the pungent, buttery cheese perfectly, and the almost startlingly dry wine accentuates the cheese's clean grassy flavors.

Wine and Cheese - Le Welsche and Gewurztraminer

I'm one of those weirdos who likes Gewurztraminer. It's true, so many of the wines are very bad - sweet and unbalanced, too viscous, devoid of subtlety, crude. But there are good versions out there, and they get lost in the shadow of badness. I understand Gewurztraminer, like Muscat, the way they relate to the other white Alsace grapes. In general, Gewurztraminer and Muscat make aromatic wines, whereas Riesling and Sylvaner are more mineral, and Pinot Gris and Pinot Blanc are more about fresh fruit. None of these general descriptors indicates anything specific about sweetness. Alsace producers make dry, off-dry, and sweet wines from all of these grapes, yet the average Gewurztraminer seems to be too sweet.

Aromatic doesn't have to mean sweet, though, and my favorite Gewurztraminer wines are dry, or at least they don't seem sweet because they are balanced by good acidity. Truth be told, I haven't found many that fit this description, but those I've found, I love: Dirler's and Binner's particularly. I haven't tried Boxler's, but I bet it's very good too. The other day I found another one, by a producer I'd never heard of, Helfrich. Full disclosure- this wine, along with several other Helfrich wines, was sent to me as a sample by a firm representing Underdog Wine Merchants in California.

A friend came over the other night and after dinner we served an Alsace cheese called Le Welsche, a washed rind cow's milk cheese in the Munster family. This particular cheese is washed with Marc de Gewurztraminer. I always thought Marc was a kind of Brandy, but it isn't (thank you ChampagneGuide.net blog) Marc, like Grappa, is a distillation made from leftover grape skins, stems, and seeds (called pomace), Gewurztraminer pomace in this case.
We unwrapped the cheese a solid two hours before eating to let it air out and come to room temperature. It is not a runny cheese like Epoisses, but is is soft and easy to spread - we went with thin slices of a seven-grain loaf. Le Welsche is not on the stinkiest end of the washed rind cheese spectrum, but it has a pungency that harmonizes well with its grassy sweet cream.

The pairing was great, and that's probably why it's a classic. The 2005 Helfrich Stenklotz Grand Cru Gewurztraminer, about $23, Imported by Underdog Wine Merchants, is a great wine, and a great value. Steinklotz means "stony block," and Helfrich's plot is calcareous bedrock covered in about 8 inches of loamy topsoil. This mineral character really comes through in the wine. The nose shows pure springwater and rock, and also classic aromas of exotic fruit and spice, but it is an elegant expression, not some sort of opulent explosion. The minerals continue on the palate, which comes across as dry, although there are 21 grams/liter of residual sugar here. That's well into demi-sec territory by Loire Chenin standards, and like the best examples of demi-sec Vouvray, the sweetness here is balanced by superb acidity. This wine is defined by its balance - it feels completely unadorned. It is only 13% alcohol, it is highly aromatic, especially on the finish, but it isn't sweet. It is full in body, but not viscous, it is very pure and almost cutting in its minerality, and the whole package is seamless. I would eagerly buy this wine, and probably lay down a few bottles too, but it is not available right now in NYC. A simple web search reveals that it is available in California, Colorado, and New York state, and it's probably available in other markets too. I still haven't sprung for the good version of wine location software.

Cloth-Bound Cheddar and Huet Vouvray

Edward Behr wrote about cloth-bound Vermont Cheddar cheese in issue number 75 of The Art of Eating, his outstanding quarterly journal on food and wine. I've been wanting to try this cheese since reading the article. Good cheddar - forget the blocky orange food-product that passes for cheddar in supermarkets, good cheddar is world class cheese. And Behr says that this particular cheddar, Cabot Creamery's Vermont Cloth-Bound Cheddar is "the world's best cheddar." Hard to be more definitive than that. Edward Behr does not use that kind of language often. More on this cheese, all quotes are from the Edward Behr article:

Very little is made --"Cabot makes just 50 wheels of the cloth-bound cheddar every two months..."

Almost no one ages cheddar in cloth anymore, but it makes the finest cheddars --"The best English Cheddar is aged merely in cloth, the same cloth that lines the molds and prevents loss of curd during pressing. This traditional 'bandage,' left in place, keeps the new cheese from sagging outward and provides a barrier against flies, once an important consideration."

It requires skill in the cheese cellar and it is time consuming and expensive -- "For the cheese producer, the great advantage to vacuum-sealing in plastic is that it eliminates all the turning, rubbing, and brushing of traditional aging."

Cloth-bound cheddar loses water to evaporation, about 12% of its weight. The concentration, the breathability of the cloth, and the surface molds on the cheese produce complex flavors -- "We made the same cheese in a vacuum-seal..., and compared the two. You're just not getting the same intensity of flavor."

The cloth is still visible at the corner of the cheese. The sides are over-run with mold.

It is not easy to find this cheese. 25 wheels per month are distributed to specialty shops around the country. Imagine my surprise when I saw it at my food coop. I asked to make sure, and it is indeed the cheese I hoped for.

Is there a classic wine pairing for Cheddar cheese? Behr, strangely, doesn't offer any advice in the article. My gut instinct was Oloroso Sherry or Port, something fortified. I checked around the Internet (information super-highway, for those who are unfamiliar) and found nothing definitive. I was on my own, and with no Oloroso or Port in the house. I honestly could not think of a red wine that I wanted to drink with this cheese. I decided on an off-dry white when I read this in the Behr article:

This cheese's outstanding appeal, apparent in some wheels more than others is a powerful caramel sweetness, to the point that it overtakes other flavors...Where does so much caramel come from...a special starter culture: 90% of the flavor of a piece of cheese comes from the milk, unless you've added something to change the flavor, which in this case we have.

And let me use that quote as a springboard - I did not like this cheese. And it wasn't a borderline, on the fence situation. Plain and simple - I didn't like it. I didn't like the caramel flavor - it didn't taste like cheddar. I know, after all that build-up! Edward Behr is a master of the edible and potable, but I disagree on this one point. It wasn't just me, either. My friend who tasted it was not impressed, and BrooklynLady tried it on another evening with no fanfare whatsoever, made a face and said "This doesn't taste like cheese." And she's right, it doesn't. It tastes like caramel and weird bitter vegetables masquerading as cheese. Why did they have to add the fancy starter to alter the milk's flavor? What would this have tasted like with a neutral starter? Did I get a chunk from a poor wheel?

Anyway...the 2002 Domaine Huet Vouvray Le Mont Demi-Sec, about $32 on release, Robert Chadderdon Selections, was so awesome that the cheese ceased to matter. I chose it because I thought it would have the acidity to stand up to a rich cheddar, and also might compliment the sweet flavors of the cheese. Domaine Huet is, with Philippe Foreau, the top of the top in Vouvray, and this wine was a great example of why this is true. Although it clearly will live forever, it is in a beautiful place right now, full of rich aromas and flavors, and cracking acidity. The nose is the essence of Vouvray, with beautiful orchard fruit and a woolly, waxy undertone. After about an hour there are clear chamomile notes too. This is a powerful wine that crackles with energy in the mouth, but it is also graceful and elegant, very well balanced. It's as close to a perfect glass as I've had from this part of the world, and my attempts to describe it just seem silly compared to the experience of smelling and drinking it.

What is the classic wine to pair with cheddar, anyway? Was I right - Oloroso?

Chess, Jazz, Baseball, and finally, Cheese.

Pairing wine and food is something that, if approached seriously and with the right balance of art and science, can produce thrilling results. But a serious approach is not necessary in order to be thrilled by food and wine pairing. The idea that a person must be steeped in knowledge in order to participate is nonsense, and I think people are starting to free themselves of this burden. People seem to be more and more comfortable with the notion that wine doesn't have rules - that they can drink white wine with Lasagna if they feel like it, and that wine and food is really about pleasure, not pretension.

I'm not trying to dumb down wine and food pairing. I think that our popular wine culture is close to going too far to denigrate as snobby the art of wine and food pairing. Overcompensating probably. It is snobby if a person is made to feel that they are wrong to make a certain pairing, or that their lack of knowledge should prevent them from happily participating. But it is not snobby to suggest that there is an art to pairing food and wine, and that a bit of practice and perhaps some study can produce great results.

I think that wine is like chess, jazz, baseball, and many other things that are easy to enjoy, but are still complex things. Wine can be enjoyed by just about anyone - it tastes and feels good. It's something that people all over the world drink with dinner. But like chess, jazz, or baseball, wine rewards careful attention in that its deeper intricacies are revealed only to those who spend enough time "practicing." And even for those who practice a lot, not everyone will experience the deepest pleasures of these things because there is a degree of talent involved. Luckily, we can enjoy without too much practice. But the practice is fun, and that's why you're reading this blog, isn't it? It's why I write this blog, anyway - it helps me practice and get even more pleasure from wine.

This has been a rather long winded way of getting to my point: I am essentially clueless when it comes to pairing wine and cheese. I understand that cheese helps to tame tannins in wine, like milk in black tea. And I am familiar with some classic pairings. But I don't know why certain wines work better than others with certain cheeses. And when I plan dinners at my house, the most uncomfortable part for me is picking wine to go with the cheeses I am serving. I know a little about cheese, more about wine, but I know almost nothing about how to make them work together. I enjoy all of my attempts, but I know enough to know that I don't know anything. I'm even confused about what to me is the most basic issue: red or white wine?

I decided that I'm going to use the light dinners on hot nights this summer to practice some more with wine and cheese. I'll read some, but I warn you - I'm going to just open different bottles with various cheeses and see what works for me and my friends. So there.

I started last week with a classic pairing - Loire goat cheese with a Loire Sauvignon Blanc. Sancerre is probably the most heralded wine to use, but I wanted a more humble wine. At Ten Bells a few weeks ago I asked the bartender to pick a wine to enjoy with their wild boar sausage. She picked a declassified Cheverny, now a Vin de Table, a blend of Gamay and Pinot Noir by Christian Venier,a Loire hipster-natural-wine-biodynamic-producer. It was utterly delicious. There was no wild streak like in Puzelat's wines, but there was a volatility to the wine, particularly to the alcohol component. Served cool out of the wine fridge I just loved it, and it was perfect with the thinly sliced sausage.So why not Venier's Sauvignon Blanc? We sat on the deck on a lovely summer evening with a bottle of the 2007 Christian Venier Touraine Le Gautrie Sauvignon, $17, Savio Soares Selections, and a well known Loire Valley (from nearby Poitou, actually, but close enough) goat cheese called Le Chevrot. It is not young cheese, and not an aged cheese either - somewhere in the middle. The center of the pate (the 'dough' of the cheese - check out Fork & Bottle for great cheese info, tasting notes, and fancy terms like pate) is snow-white and chalky, and the outer part is creamy and yellow, but not runny, even at room temperature. The wine paired well and was lovely, although not as stunning an example of Loire Sauvignon Blanc as Venier's VdT is as a Cheverny. We had a great time that evening, and as Morgan Freeman said to his Captain at the beginning of the movie Se7en: "There will be more of these."
And by the way, our lily that blooms for only a few days each spring finally bloomed. We noticed it while enjoying our goat cheese and Sauvignon. It should have happened over a month ago but there has been so much rain, everything is all out of whack with the plants.