The media just adore knocking the stuffing out of wine snobs. Last year they pounced on a study claiming that blindfolded, you couldn’t tell red wine from white. This week they’re thrilled to inform us that wine and cheese, that staple of gallery openings everywhere, don’t really go together.
“Cheese Spoils Fine Wines - So Stick to the Plonk!” screams one headline. “Wine and Cheese Incompatible,” squeals another. And, “Cheese and Wine in Worst Possible Taste.”
A study by Hildegarde Heymann, professor of viticulture and oenology at the University of California, had eleven trained tasters evaluate a variety of red wines with cheeses ranging from mild to stinky. They concluded that, across the board, cheese mutes flavors and aromas in wine, canceling out oak, berries, and tannins.
This is not news to the wine world, where it’s common knowledge that cheese and wine make argumentative bed-fellows. Blue cheese, for instance, brings out the bitterness in reds. But the muting effect is not all bad. You might lose fruit, but you also lose excess astringency. For centuries, the wine merchant, like a film director smearing Vaseline on his lens for the aging star’s close-up, has obeyed the adage “buy over fruit, sell over cheese.” If the cheddar cube on a toothpick mellows that plastic glass of red from a box, everyone’s happy.
All food changes your perception of wine, which is why technical wine tasters avoid all but a puff of white bread to scour out the mouth. Professional food tasting is as sterile and ritual-prone as wine. While the headlines gleefully crow about “Exploding the myth that a fine cheese can be enhanced by a perfect wine,” and “No magical wine and cheese pairing,” the study doesn’t compare all the possible things you could eat with wine. While not perfect, cheese could still be the best.
As foods go, cheese probably comes closest to wine in complexity and variety. Both are about balancing nature with chemical changes and aging. Artisanal cheeses, like wine, are prized for their unique character. You want consistency? Eat Velveeta.
Never mind. The press is too busy gloating. Gotcha! We exposed you, you snob! You don’t even know what you’re tasting!
Ironically, science also tells us that even if a snob could not pick his $100 bottle out of a lineup it wouldn’t matter. If mystique and price make the wine more attractive, it will taste better to him.
Then there’s this subhead: “The classic wine and cheese party should become a thing of the past, if US research to be believed.”
Let me get this straight. We’re going to stop eating something we like because a study informs us we don’t really like it? I’ve always been a little baffled by the idea of “proper” wine and food pairing, anyway. Sure, certain chemicals cancel each other out and chefs match wines to food the way they choose a certain spice or sauce. But “proper,” at best, is only a guess at what might taste good to you.
Seven years before she died, my mother met the man of her dreams. Their life together was a whirl of romantic weekends involving black lace undies, chocolate-dipped strawberries and Champagne. Had a lab technician pointed out that, scientifically speaking, champagne does not work with chocolate and strawberries; the happy couple would have been too busy licking their lips to bother strangling him with his own stethoscope.
A reader e-mailed me, “Early on in my drinking career I thought what goes with what was a bunch of crap. Then I thought, ‘What do you put on your hamburger? Mustard, dill pickles, big juicy red onions. Maybe other stuff.’ It dawned on me that certain kinds of wine taste better with certain kinds of food. VOILA.”
Those who need science to tell them what they like will be encouraged to hear that Heymann has just completed a study involving dipping sauces and white wines. She hopes to receive funding for a red wine and chocolate and a white wine and cheese study this year.
Or, instead, next time you’re perplexed about pairing wine and food, you could shut your eyes, take a few calming breaths and listen to your intuition. You came preprogrammed with this data. You don’t need the service patch.
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