So Chic organizes the French Gastronomy Week (12-18 October) with 10 participating restaurants! This delicious week is part of the Voilah! festival coordinated by the French Embassy. All the participating restaurants offer a special Voilah! menu to enjoy a taste of France at affordable prices. For this occasion, Wine Connection will make you discover the terrific association between wine and cheese!
SoChic Stories
A Table! Which wine for which cheese?
- - Gastronomy
Comté is a French cheese produced in the Jura Massif region of Eastern France. Considered one of the finest cheeses in the world, a wedge of Comte reveals a pale yellow interior and a texture that can vary from silky, flabby to crystalline. This hard mountain cheese is matured to perfection in the silence and darkness of special caves where the cheese gets its unique taste, texture and colour. There are several maturing cellars in the region where Comté is ripened for a minimum of 4 months to 18 or 24 months.
There are practically 83 flavours, which can be savoured while tasting Comté. But the main aromatic flavours that delicately linger on the palate are a balance of brown-butter and roasted-nut aromas and a sweet finish.
Its ability to melt easily means Comté goes well with many recipes right from fondues to Croque Monsieur. The cheese pairs well with Rhone reds, a Palo Cortado or off-dry Amontillado sherry from Spain.
DOM BRIAL GRANDE RESERVE 1999 – RIVESALTES, FRANCE
Nose with fruit notes like dried apricot and yellow peach jam, mixed with vanilla and coconut notes. Nice vintage, complex aromas from coffee to tobacco, even nuts and soft spices. Tasting is very fine, well balanced and nice freshness. Nuts aromas for the final notes too.
The sweetness in the wine helps balance the cheese ripeness.
2017 Domaine Masson-Blondelet Sancerre Thauvenay, Loire, France Sainte Maure is one of the classic cheeses from France. While it is made from raw or pasteurised milk of goat, it is produced mainly in Loire Valley in middle France. This buttery and smooth cheese with little acidic flavour emerges drier, denser and with a fine grey-blue edible rind. Sainte Maure comes in variety of shapes such as small log with a stick running through its middle, pyramids, cylinders and discs. The Sainte Maure goes well with wines such as Sauvignon Blanc, Fumé Blanc, Sancerre and many white wines
2017 Domaine Masson-Blondelet Sancerre Thauvenay, Loire, France
Harvested on hard limestone and flint, this wine is to drink young. Its vivacity and freshness combined with its great minerality perfectly matches seafood platters and shellfish. Excellent as an aperitif, it could also go along with a goat cheese, snack, duck rilllettes or rabbit terrine. With asparagus and raw fish, cooked in a court-bouillon or marinated, it will be a perfect match as well.
A rounded wine, this offers a good balance between acidity and ripe white fruits. A nervy edge adds a youthful texture that gives shape to the wine. Sauvignon blanc from the same region, the perfect match!
Marie Harel created the original Camembert cheese from raw milk in Normandy, France in 1791. The fresh Camembert cheese is bland, hard and crumbly in texture. Young Camembert has a milky and sweet taste. As the cheese matures it forms a smooth, runny interior and a white bloomy rind that is typical to Camenbert cheese. It has a rich, buttery flavour. The rind is bloomy white caused by a white fungus, called penicillium candidum.The rind is meant to be eaten with the cheese. This cheese is best paired with a light red wine such as Beaujolais, Chenin Blanc, St Emilion, St Estephe or traditionally a glass of Normandy cider.
2016 BARON LA ROSE “VIEILLES VIGNES” – BORDEAUX, FRANCE
A colour with ruby hints, a sophisticated small wild fruits of the forest notes bouquet mixed with delicate scents of vanilla and toasted oak, revealing a velvety and flavourful growth. The attack offers rounded and silky tannins with hints of blackcurrant and raspberry. The finish is velvety and persistent, preserving tha balance of flavours in the mouth.
The wine and cheese have equal intensity to enhance the flavours.
