/ Our magazine / 5 Riesling and cheese pairings to amaze your palate.
/ Our magazine / 5 Riesling and cheese pairings to amaze your palate.
When we talk about wine and cheese, the mind almost always drifts to the great Italian reds. It’s a natural association, but not always the most accurate. There are also interesting challenges that go beyond national boundaries, and here's Carlo's idea: the Riesling.
Few wines possess its ability to change character. It can be dry and mineral, fresh and citrusy, delicately fruity, or extraordinarily sweet. The territory changes, the producer changes, the residual sugar changes, and so does the way it interacts with cheese.
We selected 5 very different Rieslings. Each possesses its own identity and offers an ideal starting point for creating a great pairing with cheese.
Simple! Given the complexity and our desire to amaze you, we went to one of the most renowned selectors, and together we worked and chose the perfect pairing between wine and cheese flavor.
Below are the wines and their paired cheeses.
The word Trocken already tells a lot about the wine: dry, precise, essential.
Here the Riesling shows its most gastronomic face. The aromas recall ripe citrus fruits, white peach, mountain herbs, and wet stone. The finish is long, dry, and very clean.
This structure allows the wine to handle cheeses with greater personality, as long as they are not too aggressive. The saltiness of the aged milk finds almost a natural balance with the acidity of the Riesling.
We paired it with the ancient stracchino from the Orobie valleys, a Slow Food presidium, an ancestor of Taleggio.
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The Austrian Riesling often has a different identity from the German one. Less oriented towards sweetness, more taut, more mineral, with an aromatic precision reminiscent of rock, citrus fruits, and white-fleshed fruit.
The Steigelbergen perfectly interprets this philosophy.
We paired it with a Bettelmatt d'alpeggio.
The Kabinett category represents one of the most fascinating expressions of German Riesling.
Here comes into play a slight softness that never becomes cloying due to the extraordinary natural acidity of the grape variety.
The result is a dynamic, elegant wine, with aromas of yellow apple, apricot, citrus, and wildflowers.
This light sugary component opens up very interesting scenarios in cheese pairings. The contrast between sweetness and saltiness indeed becomes one of the great strengths of the Riesling Kabinett.
We paired it with a Kinara with vegetable rennet.
This Riesling also comes from the Moselle, but with a character different from Sparkling.
The sip is precise, linear, elegant. The aromas are delicate: lime, green apple, white flowers, and a mineral note almost like salt that accompanies the entire tasting.
It’s a wine that favors finesse over power.
We paired it with a Blu del Moncenisio.
With the Beerenauslese, we enter a completely different world.
The grapes are harvested very ripe, producing an intense, rich wine, fragrant with honey, dehydrated apricot, tropical fruits, candied orange peel, and sweet spices.
However, the extraordinary acidity of the Riesling prevents the sweetness from becoming heavy.
Here the pairings completely change perspective.
The wine no longer accompanies the cheese; it challenges it.
The natural sweetness indeed manages to tame the saltiness of the most intense cheeses, creating one of the great classics of European cuisine.
It’s a dessert wine, meant for slow tasting and conversation. One of those that proves how wine and cheese can transform into a true sensory journey.
We paired it with Shropshire Blue with vegetable rennet.
We started with a Sekt Sparkling Riesling Mosella [Discover here]
The most important rule is to forget overly rigid rules.
The acidity of the Riesling allows pairing with very different cheeses. What changes is the intensity.
The drier versions pair magnificently with young and medium-aged cheeses.
Those with a slight residual sugar open up very interesting scenarios with more flavorful productions.
The Beerenauslese and sweet Rieslings find their ideal ground in blue cheeses and great meditation cheeses.
The real surprise is that often Riesling can create harmonies where many reds would end up overpowering the taste of the milk.
Riesling is one of the longest-lived grape varieties in the world
Great Rieslings can evolve in the bottle for decades, developing always new aromas without losing their characteristic freshness. Some German labels are still tasted today over fifty years after the harvest.
The hydrocarbon aroma is a virtue, not a defect
Many great mature Rieslings develop a particular aromatic note that recalls flint or oil. It can surprise someone tasting it for the first time, but it’s one of the most sought-after traits by enthusiasts and testimony to the extraordinary evolution of the wine.
Riesling is considered the "translator" of the territory
Few grape varieties can express the soil as Riesling does. The same clone grown just a few kilometers apart can produce completely different wines, making this grape one of the best interpreters of the concept of terroir. It is precisely this sensitivity that makes it one of the most fascinating companions for the world of great cheeses.
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