By Victoria Brown: There is a notion that cheese and wine is a match made in heaven, but it is not as simple as throwing any red wine together with whatever cheese you happen to be serving.   There are important factors to consider, such as the maturity of both the cheese and the wine, the texture of the cheese, how strong or full-bodied the wine is, whether the cheeses can hold their own next to the wine, and visa versa.

Tina Messina, Co-Owner of The Wine ConneXtion in North Andover, Ma, is an expert in finding the perfect pairing of wine and cheese. In this case, she has found three cheeses to go with the Delas Cotes du Rhone Saint-Esprit (France 2009) – a classic brie, an aged, hard goat’s cheese and a mild, soft fontina. As Messina explains about these cheeses, “You don’t really want to get into the fuller bodies because these cheeses would not support a heavy cabernet or a more full-bodied wine.”

Cotes du Rhone has fewer tannins than many reds, and this matters when choosing a good cheese match. In keeping with Messina’s suggestions, the Larousse Encyclopedia of Wine recommends, as a general rule, that soft cheeses with surface mould, like the brie, go well with “fruity reds with few tannins such as … Cotes du Rhone” and that a light red with low tannins is a good catch all choice for goat’s cheeses, which can vary hugely in texture and maturity.  

Messina believes that when serving a selection of cheeses it is better to take the wine as the starting point. Unless you plan on serving a wine for every cheese, which would be impractical since you would need to cleanse your palate in between each one, it makes more sense to find a wine you really like and then choose a selection of cheeses that suit it.

In this case, Messina recommends the Delas Cotes du Rhone because it is a real “crowd pleaser” and, as well as going well with her cheeseboard, it is a good all rounder. In the video she adds that “the next time you … just want one wine to take you from the appetizers right through dinner, Delas Cotes du Rhone would be your best bet.”

Technical notes about the wine: Cotes du Rhone is the most common appellation (meaning a wine named for the area) in the Southern Rhone Valley in France. According to The World Atlas of Wine, its annual crop can be three times as much as that of Beaujolais and almost as much as all of Bordeaux. Although there are approximately 20 grape varieties grown in the region, the dominant grape is Grenache which is most often blended with Syrah and Mourvedre. There has been a trend in recent years to use a higher proportion of Syrah and this is the case with the Delas, which is 70 per cent Syrah, 20 per cent Grenache with the rest Mourvedre and Carignan.