What Cheese Goes With Your Wine? Here Are Some Useful Tips

When you visit the best wineries in Santa Barbara County, you’d probably hear many of your fellow wine aficionados ask about the best cheese that goes with pretty much every wine.

Indeed, the pairing of wine and cheese is one of the best food-and-beverage combinations you will ever taste. However, you have to be armed with the right knowledge to properly match these two. Unfortunately, not many people are equipped with such know-how.

Cheeses You Need to Try With Your Wine

Just visited one of the best wineries in Santa Barbara? Planning to host a dinner and impress your visitors with your cheese-and-wine offering? Know which cheeses you need to have on your table.

Comte

France’s most popular cheese, Comte is made from the milk of a specific cow breed. Blessed with an elegant taste that goes well with almost anything, this carefully-cultivated cheese comes with different flavor notes — which include hazelnut, stone fruit, brown butter, and steamed milk.

Aged Gouda

Many wine collectors agree that goudas pair well with vinos. An aged gouda (or washed cure cheese) brings a more dramatic flavor than the usual. When paired with red wine, this type of cheese will bring a certain degree of latent brothiness. If it’s paired with white wine, on the other hand, it can soften any harshness in the combination’s flavor.

Curado

Curado is also known in the market as Semicurado and Young Manchego. This cheese is perfect if you want to have a silky texture without tasting the “animal-y” flavor that most cheeses acquire upon aging. Very much adaptable to any wine, it is usually available in flavor notes like baked pastries and toasted nuts.

Prairie Breeze

Also known as the Alpine Cheddar, Prairie Breeze is known for its distinctively delicious taste. Typically manufactured using milk from family farms, this cheese is often described as a wonderful mix of the tastes of toasted sesame seeds, almond toffee, and chicken broth. Compared with your regular cheddar cheese, this one tastes sweeter.

Sartori Sarvecchio

Made in Wisconsin, Sartorial Sarvecchio is often touted as the American cousin of the popular Parmigiano Reggiano. However, this US-manufactured cheese is generally more affordable, less dry, and more likely to taste well with more types of wine. It also has more nutty butterscotch.

Cheese-and-Wine Combo: Must-Know Tips

Besides knowing the best cheeses to pair with your wine, the best wineries in Santa Barbara County also recommend knowing these important tips:

Your wine and cheese’s levels of intensity should match. This basic rule will help you avoid combining wine and cheese that overwhelms that flavor of the other.

Wine and cheese from the same place make a good pairing. Trust the locals and pair wine and cheese that were manufactured from the same area. More often than not, they are supposed to taste wonderful together.