Thanksgiving Sips… Nov. 18, 2023
As the last Saturday before Thanksgiving, my shop’s customers had big expectations for our cheese & wine pairings. As expected, we delivered with flourish and aplomb.
I am truly, incredibly, wildly excited for Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving, the ceremonial kickoff to the Holiday Season. A time of family, warmth, love, and of course, cheese and other delectable foods. This year is the first year that I’ll be incorporating artisanal cheeses into the dishes I make, and it’s also the first year I’ll be conscious of the wine pairings to go with the various meals and desserts I’ll enjoy with my family while I’m home for a little while this upcoming week.
Think of all the possibilities between both cheese and wine for mac n’ cheese, cheesy mashed potatoes, Brussels sprouts with shaved cheese… and those are only the sides! I hope the following pairings give you some inspiration, or even a shopping list to kick off this oh-so-festive feast on Thursday.
2022 Chateau Talmont Sauvignon Blanc Bordeaux – Bordeaux, France | Paired with Leonora (Mitica, Castilla y León, Spain)
2019 Going Forward Russian River Valley Pinot Noir - Sonoma, California | Paired with Hornbacher Classic (Gourmino, Wasen, Switzerland)
Vignerons Ardéchois Bourg Lachamps Pinot Noir 2020 - Ardèche, France | Paired with Pecorino Foglie di Noci (Mitica, Emilia Romagna, Italy)
2021 Domaine Bousquet Black Rock Malbec - Mendoza, Argentina | Paired with La Charmant (producer unknown, Toggenburg Mountains, Switzerland)
First up, we’ve got our 2022 Bordeaux Sauvignon Blanc, which is a blend of Sauvignon Blanc and Sémillon. This wine was quite a treat, especially for someone who does not enjoy sweet wines. The bouquet was floral, with pops of lychee and freshly squeezed lime juice. Its scent was on the tropical side indeed, but unlike other sweet wines that featured tropical fruits on the nose, this one did not give the impression that it was approaching fruit wine. It felt thin in the mouth, but in an unimposing way rather than an unimpressive way. It has a bright, slightly yet distinctly citric finish that was bursting with veritable rays of sunshine. For the cheese pairing, I really have to give credit to my shop’s lead cheesemonger. Leonora Goat Cheese from Mitica is the cheese I’m going to tell our customers about for at least the next few weeks when they ask me which cheese in the entire case I’m most excited about. She is bright and fresh and velvety and dense and perfect. She gives a perfect pop of limey-lemonyness that works with the wine like an absolute dream. I never could have produced this pairing myself, but by god am I glad I work for the kind of person that can. Bright compliments bright, and the citric yet floral notes in both this Spanish goat cheese and the Bordeaux wine worked absolutely perfectly together. Plus, they both have long finishes, so you get to experience all the flavors in harmony for a long moment after finishing your bite.
Next, we move on to our Going Forward 2019 Pinot Noir. Today I learned from our wine managers that the Russian River Valley where this wine was produced tends to give a very fruit-forward profile to its wines. This pinot noir was no exception, and I was honestly surprised by how juicy and ripe this pinot noir was, given that pinot noirs are usually on the earthy side rather than the fruity one. Plus, the alcohol content was on the higher side for this varietal - 14.5% residual alcohol. On the nose, you’ll get raspberry, red cherry, but still a bit of the woody note you’d expect plus some cocoa powder. The taste gives a much more ripe, juicy complexion than the bouquet would suggest. Overall, this Russian River Valley pinot noir was lovely, and made for very easy drinking wine. It was a very good value for the price as well, at $19.99, and it was also the wine I sold a case and a half of - unsurprising! With this pinot, we paired a cheese I had never heard of or tried, despite it being tucked right in the alpine section of our cheese case for the entire time I’ve been working at the shop. Hornbacher Classic is a raw cow’s milk cheese from Switzerland in the mountains, and smells like - I kid you not - a bouquet of flowers. A straight, fresh, stick-your-nose-in-real-good-to-get-all-the-yummy-smells bouquet of flowers. I was absolutely amazed and gobsmacked. I will indeed be gifting a wedge of this cheese to my mom for Mother’s Day next year, along with a bouquet of actual flowers. Try and tell the difference, mom! Hornbacker Classic tasted of nuts, caramel and onions, along with notes of baked potato, funny enough. I was surprised that it paired so well with our pinot, but somehow the fruity, syrupyness of the wine stands up to the great floral notes from the cheese. The acidity from all the fruit helps cut through the thick, fatty cheese texture. I really appreciated the novelty of this combo!
Third, we move on to a different pinot noir from across the Atlantic - the Bourg Lachamps Ardèche Pinot Noir. This French pinot noir from the Rhone Valley was a stark contrast to the former, in a very nice way. It was far more woodsy and gave a bit of cinnamon plus other baking spices. This was the very first wine that made me understand what anyone is talking about when they say they can detect licorice in the bouquet. I finally understood thanks to this bottle! It presented much more like a traditional pinot noir, and its alcohol content was as well at only 12.5%. It was far more earthy and with much less fruit on the nose and in the palette. We paired this particular wine with Pecorino Foglie di Noci, an Italian sheep’s milk cheese from Emilia Romagna. Pecorino Foglie di Noci is wrapped in walnut leaves, and looks like an ancient circular relic that someone pulled out from an underground cave (smells like it, too!) The texture inside though is much more moist than the exterior would suggest, and the taste is quite mellow for sheep’s milk, and raw at that! It gives a concentrated flavor though, and got distinctly and mesmerizingly nuttier the longer I chewed. On the finish, I got mostly walnut, which is unsurprising given this cheese’s wrapping. Since neither the cheese nor the wine were fruity at all, but rather both quite earthy and natural, they did indeed go well together.
And our final wine was the 2021 Domaine Bousquet Black Rock Malbec, which turned out to be a total sleeper wine and the most surprising wine at the tasting bar today. It was a 100% malbec wine, and it gave strong notes of blackberry, black currant, and a little cracked pepper on the nose. The taste gave tart raspberry, and a little bit of dark chocolate. It coated your whole mouth with its velvety, robust tannins, but it didn’t linger too long. It was surprising for a malbec I think, and I only sold two bottles. However, the couple of people who have been visiting the tasting bar since I started in September who I can tell really know their stuff about wine were very impressed by this bottle, and one said they’d be back closer to the holidays to buy a case. So who knows! We paired this malbec with a cheese called La Charmant, which is incredibly elusive on the internet and I wasn’t able to find it anywhere to link to! We only started carrying it at the shop a couple of months ago on a whim, so maybe it hasn’t broken through the American market all that much. It’s a raw cow’s milk cheese from Switzerland, that’s deep, earthy, and grassy and also nice and fatty. It’s very much an alpine cheese, but the rind is rubbed with grape must, and it almost looks like a thick layer of black ash. Pro tip: wash your hands after handling a piece or the must will stain everything! La Charmont has some tyrosine crystals, but not very many. It’s got a texture similar to an 18-month Gruyere. It’s very creamy and smooth. Definitely a very snackable cheese, and it definitely paired well with the robust and dark red we selected.
