What's Cooking Cranford - Cheese Please Wine & Cheese Pairing Tutorial
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00:00 Hi, I'm Mirazza and welcome back to What's Cooking Cranford. I'm joined by
00:04 Maria Tisdell, the owner of Cheese Please, and Brad from Tap Into Cranford.
00:08 Thank you guys for coming. Thanks. So Maria, the holidays are upon us and I'm
00:15 sure a lot of the viewers want to bring, you know, appetizers and hostess gifts to
00:20 all the different parties and events that are going on right now. And a lot of
00:24 times I think people wonder like what cheese to pair with certain wines. So
00:28 maybe you can give us an example of, you know, what wines go with what cheeses.
00:33 Well this is something that we love to do at Cheese Please. And when people come
00:38 in and explain their situation, whether they're entertaining guests at their
00:42 home or they just want to bring a nice gift to a hostess and they're wondering
00:47 what would go with what, we love to do this. So I've prepared a little
00:53 cheese plate for you all to try and we're going to try it with the different
00:57 wines that you see in front of you. So your three basic varietals of wine are
01:02 your whites, which can be a Chardonnay, can be a Sauvignon Blanc. The second is
01:08 the red, which could be Pinot Noir, Zinfandel, a Cabernet Sauvignon, and
01:14 lastly the party favorite, a sparkling wine. And that could be from France,
01:20 Champagne. It could be from Spain, Cava. It can be from Italy, a Prosecco. And we
01:26 can find different and interesting cheeses to pair with all of these
01:29 different and interesting wines. So a lot of times people are hesitant to pair
01:36 stronger cheeses with lighter wines, but we feel that the fun is in the tasting.
01:42 So the first cheese that you're going to try today is Saint-Albré. It's a
01:46 Camembert from Normandy in France. It tends to be a little on the stinky side,
01:50 but when you try it with that nice crisp white wine, I think that you'll find that
01:55 it opens up the wine. So why don't you try it and try the wine. Eat the cheese
02:00 first? Eat the cheese first. Okay. If you want, you can put it on a little bread.
02:04 Oh, excellent. Thank you. Now Camembert is known for its orangey rind. The humidity
02:16 in the part of France that Camembert comes from is quite high because it's on
02:20 the ocean. The difference between Camembert and Brie is the part of France
02:24 that it comes from. A lot of people don't realize that it is actually the same
02:27 cheese. It's just that one comes from Normandy and one comes from Brie. The
02:31 cheese is from Normandy, a lot more humidity because it's on the ocean, so
02:35 the rind tends to get a little stinky, a little orangey, and it tastes a little
02:40 stronger. But try a little bit of that Camembert with a little white wine and
02:45 see how you like the pairing. Okay. A lot of times when you're trying different
02:50 wines and different cheeses, the wines will open up the cheese. So if you feel
02:54 like a cheese isn't strong enough or salty enough, taste it with some wine and
02:59 it'll change a little bit. Good? Yeah. Good. So the second cheese that we're going to
03:09 try is one that pairs well with reds. Another adage in cheese pairing is if it
03:14 goes together, it grows together. So if something comes from the same region of
03:20 the world, then it would make sense that it goes together. So the winemaking
03:24 regions of Spain are well known for its manchegos. So whenever you're looking for
03:30 a nice Spanish red and you know that you want to bring a piece of cheese, you just
03:34 come into Cheese Please and say, "What Spanish cheeses do you have available?"
03:37 And maybe you'll even find something that you've never had before. So try a
03:41 little bit of the manchego. You can just pick it right up and take a bite and
03:46 then try it with a little of the red. Now reds tend to be on the spectrum from
03:53 really jammy and fruity and then as the tannins increase in the different
03:58 varietals, they get drier, you know, and once you get into those really big dry
04:04 reds, you want a cheese that has a little more salt to it because the saltiness in
04:09 the cheese opens up your salivary glands and then it makes a very happy marriage.
04:14 So once you're doing a Cabernet or a Zinfandel or a Barbarola from Italy, you
04:20 could go into the really heavier saltier cheeses like Parmesan or Aged Gouda or
04:26 Pecorino. So it kind of gives you a framework to work with it. Excellent. So
04:32 the next cheese that we're going to try is a blue. Now blue cheeses are
04:38 interesting. They have so much going on and their textures can vary from super
04:43 creamy up to a very dry crumbly. They can have mustiness to them if they're a
04:48 Stilton. They can be very salty which a lot of the French blue cheeses tend to
04:53 be saltier. So they really pair well with all the wines. I kind of have never found
04:59 a wine pairing with cheese that didn't go. So blue is a great all-occasion
05:05 cheese. So why don't you try a little of the blue with the white and then try a
05:09 little bit with the red and see what you prefer. If you'd like I'll give you some
05:13 more bread. Excellent. So this particular blue is from France. It's called
05:22 Bleu d'Auvergne. It's kind of our go-to blue in the store. I think the French
05:27 who have been making blue cheeses since, you know, 79 BC, they really offer a lot
05:36 of sophisticated kind of flavors and textures in their blues. The American
05:41 blues though are nice because they're so clean. They tend to be very citrusy. They
05:47 tend to have a nice kind of bite to them so they're not too soft. You know, they
05:51 have a little hardness to them. But you know, what do you think about that pairing?
05:57 It's delicious. And keep talking. Does it taste different than you thought it
06:04 would once you had it with the wine? You know, it does. Definitely when you drink
06:08 the wine with the cheese in your mouth it definitely opens up the flavors,
06:12 creates new flavors. It's delicious. It's like a different complexity. Right, right.
06:17 Absolutely. So now try it with the red. A lot of people think that red wines tend
06:23 to be too big and overpowering for different cheeses. But it can bring
06:29 out the fruit in the grape. You know, whereas you might just taste the tannins
06:33 and the kind of dryness in a red wine, it'll bring out the sweetness and it'll
06:37 bring out the kind of jaminess, the raspberry, the blackberry that's in the
06:42 wine. Definitely. And that kind of saltiness makes you want to keep drinking the wine.
06:50 And then of course you have your sparkling wines, which are your fun wines.
06:55 You know, you could have a party just with sparkling wines and different
06:59 cheeses. The cheese that I've chosen to go with the sparkling wine, which you
07:04 could easily serve for dessert, is our honey goat. So honey goat comes from the
07:09 Quebec area of Canada, which makes great goat cheeses. There's a little bit of
07:14 honey added to the curd before they set the wheels, so the flavor of the honey is
07:18 not so much sweetness, but the honey flavor. So once you try that with the
07:25 sparkling wine, you can see how that pairing goes. We've also included on
07:33 your plate a little fig spread. And a lot of people like to pair their cheeses
07:39 with different jams and jellies. The different flavor combinations can raise
07:44 from savory to sweet. We have Cabernet wine jelly jams with
07:50 cracked black pepper. We have fig jams. We have quince. We have raspberry and
07:55 strawberry. And we try to work with different jam producers that pick and
08:00 pack in the same day. So they receive organic fruits and they cook them and
08:05 they bottle them in one day. So you really are benefiting from, you know,
08:09 fruits that are fresh from the ground. And we also try to do the same with
08:14 crackers. So we bring in little handmade crackers from different producers around
08:18 the country. Castleton makes wonderful crackers out of Vermont, both
08:22 gluten-free and regular. We have crackers with fruits and nuts right in them, so it
08:28 kind of complements the saltiness of the cheese. So what did you think of the
08:32 sparkling wine and the honey goat? I was pleasantly surprised. The honey goat was delicious.
08:39 A lot of people come into the store and they say, "Oh, I don't eat goat
08:43 cheese." And we say, "Please, if you just ate one goat cheese, try the honey goat.
08:47 It's wonderful." It's the only cheese I bring to every market every week because
08:52 it's something that you can have for breakfast every day. You can have with
08:56 fruit, you know. It's just a wonderful cheese. So how did you enjoy your cheese
09:00 pairing? I thought it was magnificent. I mean, you know, I know a little bit about
09:05 cheese, but definitely when it comes to wine, I have no idea what I'm doing. And
09:09 it makes a great interactive event for you to have for your guests. Absolutely. I
09:14 have a question. I always feel like sometimes if I have a little cheese
09:18 leftover and I never know really what to do, and especially if it's been out for a
09:23 while, I don't know, maybe you can tell our viewers, especially with the holidays
09:26 around, I feel like, you know, maybe you'll have a little bit leftover. Sure. What do you
09:29 suggest? Well, first of all, we always provide you with cheese paper, which is a
09:32 special paper that comes from France that you can rewrap your leftovers in,
09:36 and they will last an appropriate amount of time after they've been out for
09:41 whatever your entertainment period was. We can also recommend different recipes
09:45 to you. So, and we can tell you how to, you know, say you had eight ounces of
09:51 manchego left. Manchego is a cheese. If it's shredded, you can freeze it, and you
09:57 could use it in cooking. We don't recommend that once the cheese is frozen
10:00 that you eat it straight with a piece of bread or cracker, but you definitely can
10:04 cook with it. And the third thing that we like to recommend is called fromage fort.
10:09 Fromage fort is something that's been made in France for a thousand years, and
10:13 it's a way to use up all the little nibbly bit pieces of cheese that you
10:17 have left over, and it's basically about a half a pound of cheese, a clove of
10:22 garlic, and enough white wine to make a paste. So you throw all that into your
10:26 food processor, you whip it up, you put it in a crock, put it in your refrigerator,
10:30 and you can use it on toast, you can use it on crackers, and you never have to throw anything away.
10:35 Oh, excellent, excellent advice. Well, thank you so much for joining us. I mean, this
10:40 was unbelievable. Thank you to our viewers for watching us, and please like
10:46 us on Facebook at tapintocramford.com.