IT IS supposed to be the perfect way to round off a gourmet meal: a wedge of ripe stilton or creamy brie complemented by a glass of fine red wine.

Science, however, suggests that wine and cheese — the combination that launched an entire genre of naff parties — are actually false friends.

Far from enhancing the bouquet of a quality red, even a cheese as mild as mozzarella will dull the palate to the complex and subtle aromas that make a wine great.

Research by a team at the University of California, Davis, suggests that wine buffs should avoid pairing cabernet sauvignon with camembert or pinot noir with Pont l’Evêque if they want to appreciate their cellars to the full.

Hosts seeking to disguise a bottle of cheap plonk, however, should serve up the cheese course straight away. Cheese is an equal opportunities flavour-killer and will mask a bad wine’s astringent taste as effectively as it will the rewarding berry tones of a good vintage.

This could well be the reason why the wine-and-cheese party became so popular in the 1970s, the heyday of Blue Nun and Black Tower.

The researchers’ findings, which are to be published in full in the American Journal of Enology and Viticulture, emerged from a study by Berenice Madrigal-Galan and Professor Hildegarde Heymann which sought to establish whether any cheeses complemented red wine really well.

In the research, the scientists first trained a panel of 11 student volunteers in wine tasting, teaching them to recognise 20 common wine aromas and to describe them using similar language.

The tasters were then asked to evaluate eight reds in a blind tasting and to rate them on a scale of one to ten. The researchers selected two bottles each of pinot noir, cabernet sauvignon, merlot and syrah. One of the varieties was cheap and the other expensive and highly rated by experts.

After sampling the wines by themselves, the tasters were then given the same wines in combination with eight different cheeses: emmental, gruyère, mozzarella, teleme, gorgonzola, stilton and two kinds of cheddar, from Vermont and New York.

In almost every case, the cheeses muted the wines’ flavours, making them all taste much more similar and narrowing the gap between the fine wines and the plonk. As well as toning down the rich berry, spicy and oaky tastes that were more pronounced in the good reds, the cheeses reduced the bitterness of the cheaper wines.

Strong flavoured cheeses, such as the blue stilton and gorgonzola, suppressed the wine flavours more strongly than the milder ones, but all had a negative effect.

Only butter aromas, which are more common in white wines such as chardonnays than in the reds traditionally paired with cheese, were enhanced, probably as the molecule responsible for that flavour is present in cheese.

The likeliest explanation for the effect is that fat molecules in the cheese coat the mouth, deadening the impact of flavours in the wine on the taste buds. It is also possible that proteins found in cheese bind to the flavour molecules in the wine to neutralise them.

Details of the research are reported today in New Scientist magazine.

. . . or a match made in heaven?

WINE and cheese parties are naff, as any guest of a 1970s or 1970s-inspired tinned pineapple and greasy oxidised cheddar cube experience washed down with evil, cheap hooch, will tell you.

Yet discerning, fine-food-aware drinkers — particularly those who follow French habits and take the cheese course before embarking on pudding, finishing off the last of the earlier courses’ white and red wines — know better.

Chèvre, or goat’s cheese, works wonderfully well with zesty sauvignons blancs, sancerre and the local valencay. Champagne, another tart, high acid wine, is the bee’s knees with the local creamy Chaource and even the smelliest French offerings of all, such as Munster, are a whiz with the local fruit and flower garden wines of Alsace.

The symbiotic relationship between the wines and cheeses of each French region is well documented, similar made-in-heaven wine and cheese marriages I expect will gradually pop up elsewhere in the world.

So stick to science, dry, dusty New Scientist, and leave the toothsome gastronomic world to others.

Jane MacQuitty

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