The Pleasure of Cheese, Wine and Fiona Beckett

I attended a delicious tasting hosted by Fiona Beckett. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the work of Fiona please visit her website www.matchingfoodandwine.com for all your food and wine matching needs! Fiona has also recently started writing for the Guardian.

We had 5 scrumptious pairings and 1 mystery pairing.

Starting with wine and cheese from the Loire, St Maure de Touraine, and a Sancerre by Paul Cherrier. As you would expect food and wine from the same region working well together, the acidity works well and neither over power each other.

Brie de Meaux with 2 different Pinots, Domaine de Chevalier Ladoix against the New Zealand Roaring Meg. In this case I felt the old world worked better with the cheese. Pinot was chosen for its light fruit and red cherry flavours. A little tip from Fiona, use cherries on you cheese board with brie for an alternitive to grapes, giving your guests a pleasant surprise.

Keane’s Cheddar with a Segla Margaux and a Chilean Gran Reserva. I felt as others did that the Bordeaux was lost in this instant and I felt the Chilean was to over powering and not my style. The cheese itself was yummy as was the Segla.

Epoisses paired with La Chapelle de Lafaurie Peyraguey Sauternes 2004 My favourite. The creamy texture of the cheese with the sweetness of the Sauternes worked perfectly.

Colstan Bassett Stilton with PX Triana Hidalgo. This was a close second favourite, the strong taste of stilton and PX was great.

A word of advice from Fiona was that people try to put out a large variety of cheese which then makes it difficult to match the wine, Have one cheese and one wine and make it work well.