WINES & CHEESES with Liz Wheadon

A guide to matching wine with Christmas dinner

Our monthly Channel Wines and Cheeses columnist is Liz Wheadon, General Manager of Glengarry Wines. Liz is also a passionate foodie. Weekends are often spent first planning the event and then entertaining friends and family with magnificent food and wine experiences.

There’s so much written on the perfect matches and the various theories behind it. At the end of the day though, it’s what you like and what suits your taste buds, that makes the perfect food and wine match.
Whilst a lot of the literature suggests that the same kind of wine and food match best together, sweet with sweet, spicy with spicy and so on; it’s all too often the complete opposites that produce the unique experiences. Matching flavours together that contrast, exaggerate the other, often less dominate flavours in the wine and food, surprising with a result that is sometimes better than the components in isolation.
Christmas Dinner is not the easiest meal to get the food and wine match right. There’s often various different foods prepared, add to that Aunty wanting a particular tipple, Uncle that only drinks red, what Mum wants, Dad and oh that’s the joys of Christmas day.
Putting all that aside, here’s my thoughts on matching with Christmas Dinner, starting with off course Champagne.
There’s a massive amount of great Champagne available this Christmas, one of the top picks is the Drappier. There’s so much to love with this Champagne house. Drappier is a family owned Champagne house that produces excellent quality Champagne. Michel Drappier and his father are both allergic to sulphur, for this reason they have worked very hard to reduce the quantity used and now produce Champagne with the lowest percentage of sulphur. We have recently landed some Drappier Vintage2004 – a great wine for Christmas day.
Following on from Champagne as an aperitif, something with a little sweetness is perfect served with cured meats and terrine as an entree. There’s two styles I really enjoy at this stage, either a Sauternes or a low alcohol Riesling produced in a sweeter style – something like the Rockburn Tigermoth Riesling 2011. We tasted this recently and will have it in store before Christmas. It’s a wonderful wine, whilst sweet, the balance from the acidity is perfect.
With the main event, I would serve a white to match the turkey and a fruity red for the ham.
Starting with the white wine, Chablis works well with turkey. We have a number of great Chablis in stock, one of my favourites is the Seguinot Bordet Petit Chablis. This Domaine can trace its history in Chablis to the sixteenth century and is currently under the skilful contract of Jean- Francois Bordet, the 13th generation making wine. The current vintage of the Petit Chablis is the 2009, it’s a great vintage, the wine is pale golden, the palate mineral and beautifully balanced.
For the red wine, a Pinot Noir would be perfect. One of my favourites at the moment is the Lake Chalice Marlborough Pinot Noir 2010. I tried this earlier in the year and was amazed, great quality and value. It’s rich, dark and savoury with an elegant lingering finish.
Then to the Christmas pudding. A nice rich Tawny port works well. Quinta de la Rosa’s Tawny port is superb. Grade A grapes from a very old family vineyard are then aged in barrel, meaning you get hugely concentrated flavours and the complexity that comes with age, yet a brightness and freshness not often seen in ports at this price.

Stilton
the King of English Cheese

Stilton is the king of English cheese. It’s a wonderfully strong blue cheese and it’s tradition for many to eat Stilton at Christmas time.
To be a true English Stilton it must be made in certain areas, a particular way, a little like sparkling wine – it can only be Champagne if it’s from Champagne. Stilton is only Stilton if it comes from three English counties, Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire.
The name Stilton comes from the village of the same name in Cambridgeshire, where its historic roots lie. The production of Stilton is protected by a Certification Trade Mark and also EU protected. Within the three counties, there are only six dairies licensed to make Blue Stilton.
To produce blue cheese, the process starts as with other cheeses, the curds and whey are separated, and the curds are then packed into cylinders and left for about six weeks. During this first ageing, they are regularly turned. After six weeks, the cheeses are pierced with stainless steel needles to allow air to enter the body of the cheese. The air encourages the blue mould; it starts to grow and moves through the cheese. The cheeses are then left there to mature before being graded. Only the highest quality cheese leaves with the Stilton name.
To make a Stilton cheese it takes about 78 litres of milk to make a round, each round weighs about 8kg. True Stilton is only ever made in the cylindrical shape, any cheese not in this shape, is just not Stilton. Another of the regulations is that the cheese must produce its own crust; it can’t have anything added to make the crust form.
There are one million Stilton cheeses made every year with 10% of the quantity exported to around 40 countries.
A quick word on White Stilton – not something we see here in New Zealand, White Stilton is also protected to the same level that the blue variety is; it’s made in a similar way, but does not have blue mould as it’s sold at about four weeks of age.
I love great Stilton served on its own and with a glass of sherry. It’s also delightful with Riesling (no seriously – give it a go).
For Christmas, all Didas stores have some true English Stilton in stock. Our Stilton comes from one of the six dairies – Colston Basset & District Dairy Limited, which started in 1913 and was built specifically to make Stilton Cheese. The only breaks in production were in wartime.