Uncorked: White wine and cheese are a perfect pair

Opportunities are endless to enjoy white wine in winter.

It’s natural to grab a big red wine for dinner or to enjoy while seated in front of the fireplace. But, white wine is an ideal foil to an all-time great comfort food: cheese.

Because white wines are higher in acid and feature flavors from fruit or citrus trees, their lighter touch, whether it’s lemon, lime, apricot, apple, pear, peach or pineapple, doesn’t overpower the cheese. When a white has herbal flavors of thyme, lavender, lemongrass, bay leaf or even fresh-cut grass, they further coax out very unique flavors in the cheese.

As members of the Cowgirl Creamery monthly cheese club since December (a Christmas present to my wife), we’ve been exposed to the best collection of artisanal cheeses available. For $95, three cheeses are delivered to your door. One from Cowgirl Creamery and two from other creameries.

For a while, an online order was the only way to get Cowgirl Creamery’s Mt. Tam, an organic, triple-cream cheese with a bloomy white rind. Finer grocery stores have started to carry Mt. Tam, but it’s never as fresh or as good as the direct shipment, where there’s a vegetable white rind, a creamy, buttery interior and a sliver of firm white cheese in the middle.

Now with a monthly shipment, we’ve had the chance to explore a wide range of cheeses. The following white wines were opened over the past two months and paired with cheeses from the December and January shipments.

Toma, from Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Co., is from pasteurized cow’s milk cheese that was like a firmer mozzarella. There’s a roasted nut and salty, milk flavor in the cheese. First sampled with Foxen Tinaquaic Chardonnay 2017 ($40), the cheese has become a staple with everything from nighttime snacks to being diced with lunch meat.

Foxen founder and Director of Winemaking Bill Wathen said in a Zoom call in October that he’s “a believer in firm acidity, because it makes for a much better food wine.”

There’s no malolactic fermentation, so the wine is driven by lemon and green apple, with bay leaf, warm rock and slate.

“One of the things we have to decide is if the wine is a little lean or a little fat after fermentation,” Wathen said. “If so, we do some lee stirring in the barrels that really helps us out. But, this was good from the get-go. It has a really nice texture.”

The Tinaquaic Vineyard is dry-farmed and was planted in 1989. Its deep roots can withstand heat waves and are tapping into a sought-after set of flavors.

“It’s got a really nice, flinty slate note in the aromas, and I really like that about the vineyard,” Wathen said. “It’s derived from the Monterey shale and the roots being so deep.”

Trapiche Medalla Chardonnay 2018 ($28), with its green apple, pear and hints of toasty oak, was a rounder, fuller interpretation but is a fine partner for firmer, white cheeses. At Artesa, winemaker Ana Diogo-Draper’s push to showcase Carneros’ fruit continued with the Artesa Carneros Chardonnay 2017 ($23) and its honeydew melon and fleshy red apple flavors. It was best with soft, white cheeses and a fruity jam.

Ewereka, from Central Coast Creamery in Paso Robles, was the biggest surprise thus far. Part of the January shipment, there was a green flower smell on it, and flavor, at first. But, subsequent cuts revealed a sweet cream and old-fashioned salty caramel candy flavor.

The Sosie Rossi Ranch White Blend 2017 ($35), which brought France’s Rhone Valley to Sonoma in a uniquely California way, had fresh fruit, acidity and an herbal note. Which is winemaker Scott MacFiggen’s plan; capture nuance. It’s a co-harvested and co-fermented blend of roussanne, grenache blanc and marsanne, where the acid levels are higher than usual even though it’s sourced from a warmer vineyard.

“The herbal note for me is critical,” MacFiggen said. “Plenty of whites are citrus and lemon juice flavors. The herbal note adds something you don’t get, and that’s the difference, it shows we’re making a serious white wine.”

Like a tropical breeze, Trinchero Mary’s Single Vineyard Sauvignon Blanc 2019 ($35) blew in with guava and pineapple flavors. The round mouthfeel is bigger than traditional for the varietal.

The green floral snap on the finish is the finishing touch and the layer the wine needed. While the pungent Point Reyes Blue Cheese really needed a sweet, viscous Sauternes, the Trinchero sauvignon blanc could be a suitable stand-in to cut through the funky, peppery, creamy flavors of the cheese.

Leftovers of the Point Reyes were spread across grilled bacon cheeseburgers for a fatty, salty and bitter-tasting masterpiece.

Cheese and wine are a perfect pair. They offer instant gratification yet still reward the next day. If there are leftovers.

• James Nokes has been tasting, touring and collecting in the wine world for several years. Email him at jamesnokes25@yahoo.com.