FOR some not entirely obvious reason, the onset of summer has me thinking about cheese. Maybe it's the sight of suddenly lush grass and the prospect of an imminent harvest of creamy delights. Or it might be the start of my summer cooking strike, which announces itself every year around this time with a sudden passion for any fast food with passable gourmet pre tensions. Whatever the reason(and whatever the season) cheese is the wine lover's dream sustenance something to complement the flavours in the bottle and help keep the drinker vertical without distracting for a second from the glass in hand.
It strikes me, though, that we may not always give this potentially sublime partnership much of a chance. Food and wine are like a man and a woman embracing each other," says top Parisian chef Alain Senderens. Think about it - a world full of madly individual cheeses and totally distinctive wines which may knock the socks off each other in glorious unison or leave each other cold. Why, when there is all this opportunity for excitement, are we so inclined to pair cheese off with any drop of red that comes to hand? Where's the fun, the element of surprise, that keeps any worthwhile relationship alive?
"People - say: we'll have cheese after the main course to finish off the red wine - but I think that's an awful statement to make," says Dermod Lovett whose Cork restaurant holds the 1996 Egon Ronay award for Irish Cheeseboard of the Year. "It means the wine is being used to wash the cheese down." Better to think in terms of proven happy marriages, he suggests - like fetastyle Knocklara with the light German red Dornfelder, or semi soft Ardrahan with a dry Riesling. And for a mixed cheese plate, what do Lovetts choose as the great all rounder? Not a middle of the road red, as you might think. "The wine that goes with most mild to medium bodied cheeses is New World Sauvignon Blanc. It has more life in it. Red is dead."
Fired by this stirring statement, I've spent the past week investigating more exotic couplings that any tabloid paparazzo and there's still more work to be done. Sonia Bradford of The Big Cheese Co. is keen to pass on her bubbly enthusiasm for summer garden parties where nibbles of Swiss Appenzeller or Royal will combine deliriously with cold sparkling white wine laced with a dash of peach liqueur. I have yet to try Jacinta Delahaye's surprise Euro marriage of French Saint Nectaire with Umbrian Orvieto.
More intriguing still is the confession of an Italian cheese importer (who must remain nameless to survive) that he would die, absolutely die, for a chunk of Parmigiano Reggiano with a generous glass of Harvey's Bristol Cream.
In the meantime I guarantee the combinations below are well worth trying, however unlikely some of them may seem. Buying a bottle of wine specially for cheese may seem a touch extravagant in these lean times - but for dinner party panache it's worth splashing out on one gorgeous chunk, rather than a host of fragments, and a wine that makes it sing.