`It is one of the great food moments you can have during the summer. Out in the garden, with some good cheese, a lovely bottle of white wine and a salad of freshly picked leaves." Seamus Sheridan would say that, being a cheesemonger extraordinaire. But hang on a minute. White wine?
The red-wine-with-cheese reflex is deeply ingrained - as stubborn to shift as a red wine stain. Maybe it's a spillover from the port and Stilton tradition, or down to the fact that there's usually red wine to polish off when the cheeseboard arrives towards the end of a meal. It's easy to forget that cheese comes in a spectrum of flavours - especially since the Irish farmhouse cheese movement has cultured so many sensational new tastes, right under our noses. How many fit in with that summer-garden, white-wine fantasy?
Now is the time to find out. "You have to wait at least six weeks after St Patrick's Day," Sheridan warns, "and then you can try the fresh young cheeses that go so brilliantly with white wines." On a recent afternoon, we set up a tasting in the Mermaid Cafe. Chef Ben Gorman lent his tastebuds, while Sarah Grubb of Findlaters provided the sort of flavour-sharp insights that occur if you are born into the family that invents Cashel Blue and go on to work for a wine merchant. Sheridan arrived with a bag full of heady Irish cheeses. One or two popular supermarket examples were added, just to make sure we covered the widely available end of the spectrum, as well as the hand-crafted and exquisite. The full line-up included Mine-Gabhar goat's cheese and Carrickbyrne from Wexford; Boilie, the soft little balls of cow's milk cheese that come from Cavan in a jar; some mature Cashel Blue and young Crozier Blue from Tipperary; Durrus, Coolea, smoked Gubbeen, Milleens and Gabriel from Cork. The challenge was to taste them all in conjunction with a mixed case of white wines.
Inspired by a couple of conversations with Grubb, and suggestions from ace food and wine matchers such as Hugh Johnson, Kathryn McWhirter, Fiona Beckett and Sandy O'Byrne, I assembled an eclectic collection of bottles, grouped in four main styles to suit (or try to suit) the various "families" of cheeses. There were light and zesty whites for the lightest cheeses; slightly richer wines for the middleweight cheeses; spicy whites for the stronger flavours of smoked or washed rind cheeses; and sweet wines for the blues.
I may as well tell you there were a couple of disasters. A Jurancon, chosen for its spicy nature, turned out to be virtually spiceless and went well with nothing. A Chilean Chardonnay was too blousy for anything. An inexpensive Australian Riesling-Gewurztraminer blend, also in the spice group, was just plain horrible with all the cheeses, and almost had us begging The Mermaid for mouthwash. A Pinot Grigio (aimed at the Boilie) and a white Rhone (intended for the Carrickbyrne) got off lightly, I reckon, with a lukewarm response. A Vouvray just about coped with the Cashel Blue.
There were, thank goodness, plenty of pretty smart pairings which you'll see chronicled below. Some followed a classic route - young Loire Sauvignon with young goat's cheese (an absolute winner); Gewurztraminer with pungent washed rind cheese (Irish Milleens a superb stand-in for the usual contender, Munster); and sweet Semillon or Semillon-Sauvignon with a nicely aged blue (following the example of Sauternes and Roquefort). The biggest surprise was how stunningly appropriate a subtly oaked Chardonnay turned out to be (see Bottle of the Week). "A slightly nutty Chardonnay is probably the most flexible white wine. It'll work really well with a lot of different cheeses," Grubb had pointed out at the planning stage and boy, was she right.
For maximum cheese and white wine pleasure, the trick is to stop thinking about cheese as a minor post-main-course addendum to a meal, and give it a more central role, where it deserves its own, carefully chosen bottle. "People don't eat huge amounts these days," said Gorman. "They might have a cheese starter and a light main course, with a white wine to suit, or a fairly substantial starter and cheese to follow, instead of a main course."
Yes, or the Sheridan summer garden lunch. The knockout wine and cheese picnic. Cheesy grins all round.
Sheridans Cheesemongers stocks all the cheeses mentioned, and many more besides. 11 South Anne Street, Dublin 2, tel 016793143; 1 Kirwan's Lane, Galway, tel 091 564 829