A Guide to the Perfect Cheese and Wine Evening
You’ve probably noticed that the more interesting a conversation is, the slower the progress around the guests of that picturesque cornucopia – the cheese board.
A tribute, no doubt, to the verbal dexterity of your visitors, but isn’t it a challenge, to postpone drinking the wine in your hand until the cheese selection makes it slow way to you, while the diners at the far end of the room discuss irrelevant subjects such as whether it’s possible to drive a Mini down steps into an underground train station – and the diminishing Brie softly oozes wider, the hacked-at cheddar loses its artistic broken look and the popularity of the garlic and herb roulade is portrayed in the tiny portion left…
A sweet and spicy chutney is a delicious complement to cheese but can also be a relentless gift. If your household doesn’t consume much at a time, the kind but frequent presents of chutney can accumulate embarrassingly in the larder! Check out El Gusto for a recipe idea to use up your superfluous jars of chutney…Melty Cheese Fondue
One has to treat cheese with respect; Brie has little taste if served straight from the fridge – it is much better at room temperature. Other cheeses – despite having a delicious taste – can still smell rather strongly of very old socks or nanny goats and are at their best served outside! The classic cheddar is always a winner and best served chilled.
Fun fact: the word cheddar is actually a verb, referring to the process of stacking the curds before extracting most of the liquid, first made in Cheddar, England. Cheddar Gorge in Somerset is very near the Rock of Ages, where Reverend Toplady sheltered from a storm and wrote the hymn in the 18th century.
Remember to sample wine before the mouth-numbing chilli cheese or highly spiced snacks that some serve, it’s nearly impossible to appreciate it properly afterwards. Wine culture has a lot of snobbery that follows it, but isn’t it best to try a fair few and stick with what you truly enjoy? Ignore the price tag (unless you’re paying for it) as it may influence you one way or the other – some of the best wines are from careful buyers researching far-flung and sometimes tiny vineyards. And be free to say what you can taste, and describe the aromas you detect, even if it sounds bizarre – there are no rules to wine adjectives! It’s a known fact that warm countries produce better wine, so it’s wise to stick with the hot sunshine country varieties, where possible.
Elegant servers do set off a beautiful cheese selection but the heavy flat boards with ornamental gilt birds and decorative fruit rolling off can be hard to handle. You must have listened to a guest exclaiming appreciatively over your cheese selection and watched her happily use the cheese knife assigned to the blue cheese for a hard cheese, then the same one again for her favourite, “I do love this soft Brie!” she trills, helping herself. A variety of small knives for each cheese is useful, especially a blade sharp enough to cope with a thick wax rind.
Wine too, when served at the correct temperature, (chill the white by all means, but please, do not refrigerate red below 10°C/50°F!) with its natural partner, cheese – should be treated with thoughtfulness and enjoyed slowly, rather than being swigged without savouring the complexities; the very first taste is often the best. And then, unlike the burgeoning conversation, the level is lowered in the wine bottle as the dusk falls, prompting your solar-powered twinkling lights to charmingly illuminate another happy evening excellently centred around cheese and wine.
El Gusto now exhorts its readers to respect the complexity and temperature of your wine, display your cheese selection on something that’s easy to pass to others, and only gift a jar of chutney when you feel you must.Â
Oh yes, and don’t hog that squishy Brie
Recipe Inspirations
Baked Feta with Honey & Dukkah
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