Mention wine and cheese to most people and they will no doubt agree with you that this is a marriage made in heaven and that one of the best ways to really enjoy a truly great wine is to serve it with cheese. But, at the risk of sounding a bit like a wine curmudgeon (which I am not), I would make the following observation.
While it is true that serving cheese with flawed wines makes a lot of sense, it is only because the cheese tends to mask the faults in the wine (just like chilling it does). Hence the success of so many neighborhood (jug) wine and cheese parties and dinners served with small glasses of cold Chianti in inexpensive Italian restaurants!
But serving cheese with really good wine, especially top-of-the-line reds, does not make much sense to me (with the possible exception of the classic, time honored combination of vintage port with Stilton cheese). Why? Because cheese not only masks a wine’s flaws, it also hides many of the qualities that make great red wines worth their price. That's why cheese is often served with great Bordeaux that is really too young to enjoy - not because it highlights its qualities, but because it masks its unpleasant tannins. There is sound logic behind the old French vintner’s axiom, “Buy on apples, sell on cheese”
In general, I have found that beer goes better with cheese but, if you want serve a really good wine with your cheese course, then I would suggest a fruity white, rather than most reds. But, even here, the field is fairly narrow with gewürztraminer leading the pack and brut Champagne close behind – Jay Roelof – www.suburbanwines.com
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