How to pick cheeses for a pairing and tasting

There are about 8 billion websites with helpful tips and tricks and lists for pairing cheeses with wines. And there are also about 300 different types of cheese at your average grocery store.

It doesn't matter if you're starting with the wines or starting with the cheeses, but pick a starting point. Let's start with cheeses in this example.

You love brie, goat cheese, gruyere, sharp cheddar, and bleu cheese. Great! Start Googling! (Hellovino.com is a great site to find quick pairing recommendations.)

Brie is a great mild, soft cheese that pairs beautifully with whites like Chardonnay. It's also quite heavenly with a sparkling wine, so start your tasting out with a nice semi-secco sparkling.

Goat cheese (one of my favorite cheeses in the world!) is another good pairing with a Chardonnay and a sparkling. Set it out with the Brie and start your tasting with those.

Put the gruyere nearby and pair it with the Chardonnay. Later, it will also go perfectly with a Pinot Noir.

Sharp Cheddar is fabulous with a crisp Sauvignon Blanc, but since you've clearly got cheeses that go best with a Chardonnay, you might hold the cheddar back to pair with a bold Cabernet Sauvignon.

Bleu cheese is a very powerful cheese. Never start with it first, or you'll ruin your tastebuds for the night! Also never pair it with whites. I have a little poem I like to use to remember that - Bleu and white, Not Right! Bleu and red, Well fed! Save that bleu cheese for your Cabernet Sauvignon.

So now you know that you want to get a nice sparkling semi-secco, a Chardonnay, a Pinot Noir, and a Cabernet Sauvignon for your tasting when you started with cheese. Does the process make sense?

If we do our shopping in the reverse order and we know what wines we want, then just find the most common denominator cheese to pair. Think soft creamy cheeses with the whites, and big, bold cheeses with the bolder reds. 

Happy sipping.... Stems up!

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