Wine and Cheese Pairing: How a French Family Builds the Board

Walk into a cheese shop in France and the counter is usually laid out by how each cheese was made: fresh, soft, pressed, blue. It's the most useful pairing tool we know, because each family has its own structure and each structure calls for a different kind of wine.

Céline and Sébastien are French, and at a French table cheese gets its own course, after the main dish. So when guests ask what to pour with a cheese board, we start where a French cheesemonger would, by asking what kind of cheese it is before any wine comes into it.

Cheese is mostly fat, protein, and salt in different proportions. A fresh goat cheese is soft, moist, and acidic, while an aged hard cheese has lost water, which concentrates its fat, protein, and salt. Blue cheese is the saltiest of them all. Those differences decide the wine far more than the milk or the brand does.

It's the same thinking as in our food and wine pairing guide, where we read the structure of the food and pick a wine whose structure answers it. With cheese, the rules are just easier to see.

The French call these fromages frais, cheeses eaten young, with no rind and little aging. They're light and carry their own acidity, so a heavy wine raised in new oak buries them while a lean, high-acid white matches them weight for weight. In the Loire Valley, goat cheese and Sauvignon Blanc are made a short drive apart, and the local habit of serving them together follows the same logic.

From our cellar, we'd pour the Dry Riesling. We make it to finish with very little sugar, and the cool Finger Lakes climate keeps its acidity high. How we decide where a Riesling lands between dry and sweet is the subject of our article on whether Riesling is sweet or dry.

Brie comes from just east of Paris, on the road toward Champagne, and soft cheese with sparkling wine is a familiar pairing in that part of France. It's an easy one to explain. Fat coats your mouth, the bubbles and acidity lift it away, and each bite of cheese feels as fresh as the first.

Our sparkling wines are made by the méthode champenoise, rest over ten years on the lees, and are handled at least 68 times by hand, with most bottles going to our Wine Club members. For a creamy cheese we'd open the Blanc de Blancs, made from white grapes only. If you prefer a still wine, our Chardonnay Unoaked, raised in tank, keeps the weight moderate and the acidity intact.

In French these are pâtes pressées, pressed cheeses whose curd is squeezed to drive out water and then aged for months. Less water leaves the fat and protein more concentrated, and protein is what softens tannin. That's why a firm red that feels rough on its own settles down next to a wedge of aged cheddar.

Our Cabernet Franc Barrel Select is an easy pick here. So is a barrel-aged white like our Chardonnay Barrel Select, whose time in oak gives it enough body for a firm mountain cheese. Our Cabernet Franc food pairing guide and Chardonnay food pairing guide go further.

This is the pairing that wins over people who swear they hate sweet wine. Salt and sugar is one of the oldest combinations in cooking. A dry red beside a blue cheese often feels harsh, because the salt and the strong mold push against the tannin, while a sweet wine meets the salt head on.

Our Vendanges Tardives, a late-harvest Riesling aged in barrel, fills that role, and so does our Riesling Sweet Reserve. Pour a small glass. Blue cheese and sweet wine are both concentrated, and a little of each goes a long way.

1. Pick one cheese from each of three or four families rather than five of the same kind.
2. Taste from mild to strong: fresh, then soft, then hard, then blue.
3. Pour the wines in the same order, dry and light first, sweet last.
4. Add bread or plain crackers to reset your mouth between pairs.
5. Take the cheese out of the fridge an hour ahead, since cold cheese hides its texture.

With a single bottle and a mixed board, choose a white with high acidity or a sparkling wine. Many guests are surprised that white wine is often easier with cheese than red. Its acidity handles the fat and salt of almost every family, whereas tannin gets along only with the hard, aged ones.

We love building these boards with our guests, because the differences are so easy to feel side by side. Our Signature Wine & Food Pairing is a seated experience that follows the seasons, and the full range of bottles is on our wines page.