"Red wine with hard cheese" does not tell you what to buy.
This guide names ten specific pairings. Each one lists a bottle currently on our shelves in Bow Valley Square and a cheese you can buy from a Calgary cheese shop, we recommend our friends at Say Cheese.
How to Pair Wine and Cheese
Most pairings come down to four things: fat, acid, tannin, and salt. Fat coats the palate. Acid clears it. Tannin binds to protein and softens. Salt makes fruit taste sweeter. Understanding those four is enough to pair most wines and cheeses without a chart.
Match Intensity Before Anything Else
Start with weight. A fresh goat cheese is overwhelmed by a full-bodied Barolo. A three year cheddar overwhelms a light Pinot Grigio. Pairings work best when the wine and the cheese are similar in intensity.
Age is a reliable guide. Young, soft and mild cheeses suit lighter wines with good acidity. Aged, hard and pungent cheeses suit wines with more tannin, structure or concentration.
Acid, Tannin, Fat and Salt
Acidity does most of the work in white wine cheese pairing. Sancerre and Chablis cut through butterfat and clear the palate between bites, which is why many of the best pairings are white rather than red.
Tannin works differently. It binds to the proteins in aged cheese, and both soften as a result. A young Barolo tastes rounder alongside aged Gouda than it does on its own.
Salt is the one most people overlook. It suppresses bitterness and brings fruit forward, so a salty blue cheese makes a fruity wine taste sweeter. That is the reason blue cheese and off dry wine work together.
10 Wine and Cheese Pairings You Should Try
Champagne and Brie
Brie is soft, buttery, and high in fat, so it needs a dry wine with acidity and bubbles. Bartel Brut Rosé NV at $65.99 has enough weight to sit beside a ripe Brie Paysan without being lost.
The bubbles and acidity clear the butterfat between bites. This is a good pairing to open a board with, and it is the reason sparkling is the standard answer for wine pairing with brie.
Sancerre and Selles-sur-Cher
Both come from the Loire Valley and grow on the same chalk soils. Gemiere Sancerre Blanc at $46.99 is citrusy with a flinty edge. Selles-sur-Cher is a small ash-coated goat cheese with a lemony tang.
The wine's acidity matches the cheese's tang rather than competing with it. Sancerre food pairing is rarely more straightforward than this.
Petit Chablis and Comté
Pascal Bouchard Petit Chablis at $31.99 is an unoaked Chardonnay, with lemon and mineral notes and no vanilla. A 15-month Comté is nutty, with a browned butter character.
The wine's minerality lifts those nutty notes. An oaked Chardonnay adds richness on top of an already rich cheese and makes the pairing heavy, which is why a Chablis food pairing is the better choice here. Taste the Chablis before you buy the Comté, since the age of the cheese changes the match.
Red Burgundy and Gruyère
Albert Brenot Bourgogne Pinot Noir at $36.99 is light, with cherry and earthy notes. Gruyère 1655 is savoury, slightly sweet, and long on the finish.
Pinot Noir has soft tannin, so nothing turns bitter, and the earthy character in both lines up. Red wine and cheese pairing fails when the tannin is too strong for the cheese. This is the safe middle ground.
Barolo and Sylvan Star Grizzly Gouda
Sylvan Star makes its extra-aged Gouda in Red Deer County, about ninety minutes north of Calgary. Aged 18 months, it is nutty and firm with crunchy tyrosine crystals throughout, and it has won top Gouda honours at Canadian cheese competitions more than once.
Reversanti Barolo 2020 at $49.99 has the tannin to handle it. The tannin binds to the fat in the cheese and softens, and the crystals give texture against the wine's structure. Barolo food pairing usually points to braised meat, but aged Gouda achieves a similar effect with far less work. For more options from the region, see our guide to 10 great Barolo wines.
Brunello di Montalcino and Ossau-Iraty
Adagio Brunello di Montalcino 2020 at $67.99 is Sangiovese Grosso, with sour cherry, dried herbs, and leather. Ossau-Iraty is an aged Basque sheep cheese, mellow and nutty without the sharpness of a hard cow's milk cheese.
Sheep's milk is higher in fat than cow's milk, so it needs acidity more than tannin. Brunello has both, and the herbal notes in the wine suit the cheese.
Chianti Classico and Pecorino
A traditional Tuscan pairing. Castello di Radda Chianti Classico at $34.99 is bright and savoury. Pecorino Crotonese is a hard sheep cheese with noticeable salt.
The salt brings the wine's cherry fruit forward, and the acidity clears the salt. Chianti Classico pairing works on that contrast, and it is the clearest example on this list of a regional food suiting a regional wine.
Bordeaux and Avonlea Clothbound Cheddar
Avonlea is made by COWS Creamery on Prince Edward Island, wrapped in cloth and aged 18 months. It was named World's Best Vintage Cheddar at the World Cheese Awards in 2015 and has won grand champion titles since.
It is sharp enough to need a structured wine. Chateau Lamothe Bergeron Haut-Médoc 2016 at $46.99 has cassis, cedar, and firm Cabernet tannin. A softer red would be overwhelmed by the cheese.
Riesling and Bleu Bénédictin
Bleu Bénédictin is made by the monks at the Abbaye de Saint-Benoît-du-Lac in Quebec and has been produced since 2000. It is creamy in the centre and salty at the edges, and has won top blue honours at the Canadian Cheese Grand Prix.
Blue cheese pairs best with a white that has some fruit weight. Landlust Riesling at $19.99 is medium dry, and that slight ripeness balances the salt. A fully dry white tastes thin next to a blue. Riesling cheese pairing is the exception to the rule that dry is the safer choice.
Amarone and Stilton
Amarone is made from grapes dried before pressing, which concentrates the fruit. Sant'Antonio Amarone della Valpolicella 2020 at $74.99 has dried cherry, fig, and cocoa notes, with substantial body.
Stilton is firm, crumbly, and mineral. The wine's concentration balances the salt, and the cheese keeps the wine from feeling heavy. Serve this pairing at the end of a board.
Where to Buy Good Cheese in Calgary
These cheeses are not stocked at most grocery stores. You want a counter that cuts to order and can tell you how long a wheel has been aged. Three cheese shop Calgary options cover everything on this list.
Peasant Cheese has locations in Kensington at 1249 Kensington Road NW and in Mission at 2206 4th Street SW, with more than 120 cheeses cut to order. It is the best option for the French side of this list. They carry Comté, Gruyère 1655, Ossau-Iraty, Stilton and the small Loire goat cheeses, including Selles-sur-Cher, along with Avonlea and Bleu Bénédictin.
Springbank Cheese Co. has counters at Willow Park Village, Crowfoot Corner and Garrison Gateway. They are the reliable source for Sylvan Star's Alberta Gouda, Avonlea Clothbound Cheddar and Bleu Bénédictin, and they stock Comté at both 10 and 15 months.
Say Cheese Fromagerie is inside Crossroads Market at 1235 26 Avenue SE. It is open Friday through Sunday only, so plan it as a weekend stop. They carry Avonlea, COWS Creamery's PEI cheddars, local goudas, and a good blue selection.
Call ahead for anything specific. Cheese counters rotate stock, and a wheel that was available last month may not be there now.
How to Build a Wine and Cheese Board
Five cheeses is enough. Beyond that, the pairings blur together, and the wine list becomes difficult to manage. Choose a soft cheese, a hard cheese, a blue, and one or two in between.
A few practical wine and cheese board ideas:
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Take the cheese out early. Cold cheese has little flavour. Allow 45 minutes to an hour at room temperature.
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Plan around 100 grams per person if cheese is the main event, less if there is other food. One bottle serves two to three people.
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Serve light to heavy. Start with the Brie and Champagne and finish with the Stilton and Amarone. Working in the other direction makes the lighter pairings hard to taste.
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Keep accompaniments plain. Neutral crackers, a plain baguette and a few nuts. Sweet chutneys and strongly flavoured crackers interfere with the pairing.
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Add charcuterie last. Wine pairing with charcuterie follows the same logic as cheese. A mild prosciutto suits the whites, and a peppery salami works with the Chianti Classico or the Barolo.
Use a separate knife for each cheese, particularly the blue.
Taste Before You Buy at Cork Fine Wines
Reading about a pairing only tells you so much. Tasting the wine first tells you whether it is the bottle you want next to your cheese.
We pour free tastings twice a week at the shop in Bow Valley Square, one focused on everyday bottles and one on the higher end of the French and Italian shelves. There is also a registered blind tasting club once a month. Details are on our wine tastings page.
We run private and corporate tastings as well, either in store or at your office, which suits the downtown towers nearby for team events and client evenings. We deliver across Calgary, and CFW Club members receive a standing discount on wine along with early access to bottles that do not reach the shelf.
If you are building a board and want help matching bottles to what your cheesemonger sold you, bring the list in. Our team does this every week.
