Folks, you're listening to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I'm Greg. I do communications at Binny's. And on this episode today, Roger. Hey, how's everyone doing? Roger, I do beer at Binny's. Roger doesn't even have to introduce himself anymore. Oh yeah, you know me. And we have Alicia. Hi, all. Yes, Alicia from Wine. And Chris. Hi, everybody. Thanks for having me. I am also in Wine. Chris, you have some kind of bonafides that make you qualified to lead us through the topic du jour. Allegedly, yes. I did cook professionally for many, many years and I owned a cheese shop and aged and sold cheeses of many varieties. It was also a wine store. So yeah, I have some pretty deep experience in the area. Plus, I'm just a cheese freak. So cheese freak. Yeah. We're going to sneak some beer in here as well, because beer and cheese go together beautifully. Absolutely. I mean, Chris, of course, you're qualified for that as well. Chris never talks about it, but he's a certified Cicerone as well. Oh, Roger. Roger, he talks about it all the time. Don't make me blush. Anyone who knows me knows that I have an old used Girl Scout sash that I have all my pins from various organizations on. Looks pretty good. All the qualifications. That's the quintessential food pairing with almost any kind of beverage, right? You have something that can be salty or fatty or nutty. No matter what, cheese is going to go with all kinds of beverages. We're focusing on pairing with cheese today. Absolutely, Greg. There's a lot of fun to be had with this. Anywhere from drinking beer at lunch with a platter of cheese, English ales and a plowman's platter is a great delight, of course. Or a cheese course after a fine meal. Or just hanging around and eating cheese and drinking. Couldn't be a better activity. So I think we're going to move through just a few really basic styles of cheese. This episode is not designed to be super deep, but we're going to scratch the surface on some readily available styles and talk about what might pair well with them. And I think to start off, I have a really nice goat milk cheese here that I love. It's American made from California. This pairing is classic. I'm going to put it together with some Sylvian Blanc. In the Loire Valley, they produce a lot of Sylvian Blanc. And also in the same very same areas, you find lots of goat cheese production. So this is one of those pairings where you're matching food and wine from the same place together. Doesn't always work, but in this case, it's brilliant. Usually a safe bet, right? I mean, the food and the wine have evolved, basically designed to work together. Indeed. Yeah, that's often the case. Here we've got a case where not only do they find similar production areas, but they also have great affinity just naturally for each other. Given that goat's milk tends to yield pretty high acid cheeses, so they're tangy and bright, and then you put it together. This is one of those pairings where you're matching acid with acid, which works famously because usually when you're eating acidic food with an acidic wine, the acid in the wine starts to take a little bit of a backseat, and a lot of other more fruit-driven flavors pop out in the wine. If you've got a high acid wine, it mellows it and rounds it out. It's really great pairing. Chris, do you have any tips for our listeners in terms of purchasing goat cheese? One of the reasons I like goat cheese is that it tends to be quite affordable, and you can get a lot for your money with it, and so you have more money to spend on the wine, I suppose. But any tips in terms of ageability or certain regions that you really enjoy? Yeah, absolutely. When it comes to goat cheese, probably the most familiar form that people know is fresh chev as they would call it in France. It's unripened, it's spreadable, it's tangy and creamy. It's really nice. You can put it in salads or just spread it on a piece of baguette. Really delicious, not something to age, but there are lots of age versions, and that's the case with this Humboldt Fog that I have here, which is a very unusual shape for goat cheese. Most goat cheeses are made in very small sizes, primarily because the curds are very, very soft, and it's easy to ladle little molds. But here we have one from California that's made into basically like a big cake. It's probably four inches tall, and it is soft-ripened the same way. So the effect you get is chalky, fresh, tangy goat cheese in the middle, and then as it ripens, that kind of melty, gooey thing starting on the outsides, and it's much more pungent there too. You've got like the animal that makes the milk, which is the sheep or the cow or the goat or whatever, and then like different ways to prepare it too. So when people think of goat cheese, they tend to think of the little like vacuum-packed logs that you get at the jewels or whatever. Exactly. That's the fresh chef first. Right. But then there's these other ways that you can manipulate that same milk and make them in totally different styles? Absolutely. There are endless ways to manipulate cheeses. Well, is humble fog kind of funky or no? No, it's not necessarily. It's funky in the way that brie might be funky in that penicillium, that white, bloomy mold on the outside serves to ripen it. And over time, it gets gooey and a little more piquant. And the mold itself has kind of a spicy flavor, but it doesn't have that intense blue cheese fung. So when it comes to beer and goat cheese, I think some of the better pairings mimic the bright acidity. And it's not always easy to find acid in beer unless you're looking at wild fermented styles like lambic or something like that. Oh, Chris, you've been away. Come on. There's we're in we're in we're in the sour renaissance, the Kettle Sour renaissance. So we're in the Sour Patch Kid. Boo. Lacto up your rear end. Yeah. You know, I never tried that. Maybe having cheese in my mouth at the same time would actually make it so that I can drink those. Anyway, you know, things that are more traditional that I would recommend would be things like Belgian Vit Beer, you know, light, little bit of spice and really fresh tasting. Even a Boulder beer, also Belgian, like a Cesson that has some really crisp, bright flavors works nicely too. You know what would be perfect is that, I don't even think it's around now, but Vitakurky made that Vitakurky wild. Oh yeah, the wild one. Pitched with the Petrus. I drink a lot of that when it was out actually. That was such a good beer. It really was. But a kindred soul, you could even do a little down and dirty, mix a Vitakurky normal with some Petrus, pale. Oh, out there. You get kind of a similar flavor. So another wine that came to mind, and actually that I'm drinking here now, as we're talking about goat cheese, and Chris, you mentioned kind of this tanginess. It's high in acid. There's a chalky quality as well. And I'm all about kind of the chalky flavors of food and in wine. And so I actually have an alborynio here from Ria Spicius. It's Ferrero's. One of my favorite alborynios that we carry. It's $23.99. And that is another alternative for any goat cheese selection. If you're not in love with Sauvignon Blanc and you want to try something else, it also, because of its location in the northwest of spain, it has just this brilliant, and just kind of because of the grape bridle, but it has this brilliant salinity to it. And I think that will really go well with goat cheese. And I'm having it with the Sheep's Milk Cheese, an Italian ricotta salata, which is really chalky, really salty, and quite kind of dry. And I love the pairing. So just to throw out, alboreño is a great kind of goat and sheep cheese option. Yeah, Alisha, I couldn't agree more. Alboreño is a great choice for goat cheese and for the extreme saltiness of ricotta salata. As we all know, salt and acid are best friends. And in particular, the example you've picked is a really good example of that style. It comes not only from Rias Vajas, but the subregion of the Val do Salnes, which is the heart of the original region, has some of the only old vines left in the area, and is close to the Atlantic Ocean. So just really it accents those saline qualities, that really crisp, fresh style of alboreño. Absolutely fantastic choice, I must say. With these goat cheeses, sometimes you see the chevro style, like herbs on the outside. Yeah. I know during the summertime, I like to grow a little tiny bit of herbs in the backyard and I've just mixed herbs in before. You can even do it as simple as mixing in cream cheese. Sometimes people I think sometimes overthink beer and cheese pairings, and some more simpler beers can be really nice, like a Pilsner, something that's kind of herbaceous. An IPA can go really well with this style of cheese. I think that's a brilliant point, Roger, largely because one of the herbs I actually love to mix in the goat cheese, as you suggested, is rosemary. It really has a great affinity for the tanginess, and then you get those kind of herbal piney notes that you might find in some hops. So it really works nicely together. Thyme is nice too. Basil, of course, if you want something softer and a little anisey. But yeah, almost anything. Goat cheese is so fantastic with green things in salads and things like that, because it's so fresh tasting. But yeah, herbs. There are lots of cheeses out there where goat cheeses or sheep cheeses are already rolled in herbs for you. So do you have a sheep's cheese too, Chris? I absolutely do. My original thought was I was going to do kind of a Spanish classic, maybe manchego or roncal with a- Say that one more time, Chris. Manchego or roncal. This is very weird to me, but I failed to find any manchego in the store. So I went with another sheep's muck cheese that I like a lot called Oso Irrati, which is from right across the border in France in the Pyrenees. So they have a lot in common. And, you know, I could have put that with the Rioja too, but because I'm a total weirdo, I happen to have a bottle of Negret on hand, which is a great variety that you will rarely ever see. But it's grown around that same area right around Toulouse in France. So this is a play on tannin, rich tannic structure against fat and protein, which is very common. Sheep smoked cheese is also very versatile. It can go with a lot of things, whites and fortified wines as well. So that's what I did here, and it's quite excellent, I have to say. I know Manchego. I don't know the Oyo de... What did you say? Oso errati. It's from the Basque region, so the name is kind of weird. The Manchego that I'm used to, available at the produce market by me, it definitely has the pungency that you would get from a sheep's milk, but it also has enough age that it gets a little bit of this nutty quality, like an almond kind of quality. How does it compare to that? The mass market one that I'm used to. Quite similar. Is there an analog with some grapes that people would know? You're describing really wild stuff. Is that like Grenache from the Rhone? Yeah. I mean, the only reason I went this way is for, again, regional affinity and you don't have to do that. My original pairing was going to be Manchego and Tempranillo based grape. Oh yeah, there you go. That might help you out a little bit. So Manchego and Rioja or the dialed to 10 obscure version. Oso Erati and the grape variety is Negret. But again, I'm still working under quarantine conditions. So I pulled out. Just whatever you have lying around. I had this Oso Erati Sheeps Milk Cheese a couple weeks ago and it is fantastic. So great choice, Chris. But I actually paired it with Coturon and it was wonderful. So yes, Greg, when you mentioned Grenache for sure, I think that would be a lovely pairing. Yeah. Also perfect. This is another cross-cultural product, Garnacha and Grenache span France and spain. What about the Grenache and that Rioja that you're talking about, probably? There can be. Yeah, it's allowed, certainly. Manchego-wise, in that type of pairing, we're looking for shared qualities and affinities. That style of cheese I really enjoy with amber ales and amber loggers. So if things like a nice brown ale or a nice amber, like a Bell's Amber or Great Lakes, their Vienna loggers, the Elliott Ness, Battire, all those classic malt forward beers, I think work really well with that style. Yeah, I would say that you're spot on, Roger. Nut browns like Samuel Smith's Nut Brown is great with sheep's milk cheeses because they dovetail with those nutty qualities in the cheese. Let's not give short shrift to the fortified wines of spain when talking about these cheeses because Sherry is phenomenal with sheep milk cheeses. Which level? Well, you can drink anything from, if you're really starting out your meal from a Fino, but I think a Monteato Fino has... Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Yeah, because it has all that nuttiness to it, but it still retains really bright, tangy aspects, the aldehydic aspects you get from the aging under the floor. So you get tang and nuts at the same time, which is, I mean, exactly what... This is a classic match flavor for flavor pairing. I love the sherry idea, Chris. People need to drink more sherry. Hear, hear. I can't agree more. So underappreciated and so fantastic. I think also somewhat misunderstood, and people think because it's fortified, it's going to be sweet, and there are sweet examples, but believe it or not, maybe the sweet ones are what, 20 percent of our shelves, and the Fino style that has those yeasty, saline, seashell, oceanic qualities to it is just beautiful with some of these cheeses we're talking about. As is, as you mentioned, the Amontillado, which I think is your wild card. I struggle to maybe think of a cheese that wouldn't work with it. Obviously, some will be better than others, but I think it'd be beautiful, and please talk to our wine consultants about Sherry because I want it to make a come back, and they're making gorgeous, gorgeous wines. Right on, Alicia. I think it is a misunderstood category, especially about that sweetness thing you're talking about. By definition, Sherry is pretty much fermented dry in most of its major forms, and then sweetened on the backside with another grape like Pedro Jimenez or Muscatel, rather than having the fermentation stopped like you would import. So a lot of things on the market are absolutely bone dry and very, very bright and fresh and tangy from the aldehyde notes in it, which is a whole other subject. But not to say that sweet Sherrys aren't great. Well, again, if you get to saltier or blue cheeses, cream Sherry, fantastic. So some of the tasting notes that you're talking about, you're taking the herbal quality, maybe even Roger's garden herbs, and then mixing them with a wine with those, like reflecting those herbal sensibilities too. What about going pairing by opposites, like salty with sweet or herbal with like round melon, like a Viognier or a Paso white blend, something like that? Yeah. I mean, contrasting is quite popular. When we get to some of the richer cheeses like the cheddar or blue, classic pairings are almost always sweet and rich and sometimes high in alcohol. So yeah, you can definitely compare, contrast and make up your own super weird pairing yourself. You might stumble on something that's quite excellent. As we've said before, pairing is by no means like a, oh, this is the correct answer type of exercise. I think a lot of people get overwhelmed by it and feel kind of intimidated by it, but the best way is to just try and see what you like, because everyone's going to be different anyway. Absolutely. As this is kind of an introductory class or whatever you want to call it, I thought I would stick to some real standards. So that's why I went with Goat Cheese and Sauvignon Blanc for their historic affinity. And I'm drinking, by the way, this is a Francois Crochet Sans Serre 2017. It's really nice, super vibrant acidity. And without, I may say, having high levels of pyrazine, that kind of green pepper thing going on, it's still fruity and really nice. All right, let's go to Cheddar Town. Cheddar Town it is. Cheddar Town. So as we know, cheddar is from west of England. It's not from Wisconsin? What do you mean? It's not from Wisconsin? It is indeed from Wisconsin. Don't get me wrong, Wisconsin has a fine and long tradition of making excellent cheddar. But there's actually a village named Cheddar in Somerset out in the beautiful pasture lands. You know what, I'm going to interject another product from that area that we're giving really no notice to today and is really good with cheese, and in particular, cheddar, and that is cider. So a little cheddar and some scrumpy, you're there. Oh, yeah. I've got a cider to drink with my, albeit it's a pedestrian Wisconsin cheddar that's only got about a year, year and a half of age on it. Roger, as usually, you're ahead of me. It's quite nice. I am pairing it with this. Look at this cutesy, bootsy little Vandermil Brut can that I have here. He loves this stuff. It's an eight ounce can of Vandermil. Yeah. Fermented bone dry, 6.5 percent alcohol. This thing's only got 80 calories in it. Great for mixing cocktails. You don't want to commit to opening a whole bottle of wine. This is its second appearance on Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. It is a cute can. I can definitely say that. Well, that's a good pick, Roger, because the classic cider of Western England is scrumpy, which translates basically to a rough cider. It's wild fermented, can be a little bready and funky, but is absolutely fermented bone dry. No sweetness at all. And sometimes not a ton of apple character because it gets a little neutral after a while, but it provides some kick for those farmhands who want to have their cheddar and hard lunch. One time I got in a fight in a bar with a guy named Scrumpy. Scrumpy's, the few scrumpies that we have access to, the thing that might turn people off is that sometimes they have an acidic character to them, so they're a little vinegary. Yeah, right. I mean, that's a by-product of that natural ferment, not pitching a cultured yeast. You get Brett and you get lactic flavors, lactobacillus, things like that, acting on them. But if you like those funky flavors, you can find those in England or spain. spain, almost every cider I've ever had from spain is pretty bready and also some French ones. The good folks at JK's Ciders made a name for themselves by making an organic, very natural scrumpy, and that's available at Binny's. That's definitely worth checking out if you're interested. Chris, what did you pair with the cheddar? What wine? I went a little weird with this pairing. I'm going to pour it right now. Imagine that. Actually very mainstream, but it's not a typical cheddar pairing. A lot of times, I will personally drink port or Madeira with an aged English cheddar, and a lot of people would like a big red wine with it. But I'm going with the idea, strangely enough, that dovetails with the cider idea, which is I'm pouring a Chardonnay with it. So I think apples. Out there. Yeah, I know. It's a weird pairing, but a very mainstream product. If you've ever had cheddar and apples, I mean, what's better than that? Right now, I'm about to try Freeman's Rio Feu Chardonnay from the Russian River Valley. It's maybe a little, I would like a Chardonnay that's more pear and apple oriented. This one's maybe a little more tropical, but it's still quite bright. That sounds delightful. Tropical Chardonnays. I like those tropical wines. Yeah. So yeah, this is definitely tropical. So the fruitiness definitely will go nicely with the cheddar. And this leads me to something that Roger, maybe you can speak to is, you know, I'm down with very classic beer styles and old school pairings. But with all of the new wave of hops, where the fruit component is not coming from esters, like you would expect in a traditional ale, you're getting a lot of those wild tropical fruity notes from hops. I think there's a lot of territory to explore in American craft IPAs and things for their fruit components. What do you think? For sure. Personally, I think it's neatest when you get those flavors from the hops and then it might be a little more nuanced. There's a beer that just came out from Revolution called Tropic Hero, and it's the it's actually the double dry hopped version of that. And that is all just all the tropical characters from Hop. It features some Sabro hops, which are a really cool new variety of hops that have a lot of interesting berry and tropical character to them. But yeah, beers brewed with things like mosaic are real tropical. So from a cheese standpoint, that's kind of an interesting thing to think of. As far as tropical and cheese, you'd probably be better at that than I. I guess the first thing that would come up would be like a maybe like the Chevro. We were talking about something that's like kind of a little little tiny bit of tartness to it, because tartness and tropical go really well. Obviously, light enough that it wouldn't get crazy overwhelmed. I don't know. Yeah. I think if you think about a lot of the traditional accompaniments for cheese as far as food stuffs go, there are a lot of fruity things, dried fruits, quince paste, preserves, jams, all kinds of things that spark off the saltiness of cheese. So if you bring a beverage with fruitiness, you're kind of doing the same thing. That's true. Yeah. Like I could see a triple cream cheese, some of that on a nice baguette, and then drink that with one of these kind of interesting Nuvo IPAs that are really heavily dry hopped and fruity. That could be quite delicious. Hey, Roger, did you mention your cheddar pairings for beer? I don't know if you did. No, I did not. So cheddar, well, I did one of them was a cider. So a nice dry cider, or you could even do like an off dry as well. Like, you know, like you mentioned before, the sweetness, the apple with, if you like apples with cheddar, you like apple pie with cheddar. I mean, that should go to show you how easily and how well a cider is going to pair with it. Even some of the sweeter ones. But I chose kind of a beer that's almost cheating because it's one of the best beers in the world. So it pairs with almost everything. I did a trap Roquefort, and I've been drinking that with the cheddar, and it's just absolutely incredible. The earthy complexity of this beer is just, it sets off that sharpness of the cheddar and accentuates it some, just so good. But Belgian styles in general, I think work beautifully with cheddars. Agreed. Do you have any blue cheese on hand? Because you got to try that with the blue, too. Oh, yeah, this is, I mean, yeah, obviously, it's a super no brainer. I don't, unfortunately, because of the quarantine, I haven't made it out to get some cheeses in a while. So but yeah, this, I mean, like you said, sometimes when you pick the terroir, the terroir works, right? So, I mean, this is right from the land of that. So, of course, they're kindred souls. Are you saying Rochefort with Rochefort? Yeah. With, wait, Rochefort with Roquefort? How do you say that? They're both Roquefort, yeah. Roquefort with Roquefort? One thing that we're not touching on is wash rind cheeses, which- That's because no one likes them, Chris. They're disgusting. That is so false. Of course you like them. I know Alicia loves a bwos. I store any cheese fact about anyone I know away in my brain, so I know she loves a bwos. And I'm just gonna say that that is the classic monastery style of cheese. In fact, one of the famous ones, Munster, just means monastery. But a lot of monasteries make cheese. Chimay famously makes several cheeses that go really well with their beer in that style. I will never forget trying Chimay with their cheese. I was so excited. I mean, I'm such a huge Chimay fan. I'm actually, I broke my Roquefort glass in the move, and so I'm drinking Roquefort out of the Chimay Gobbler right now. But I tried their washed rind cheese, and this was, I don't know, this was a long time ago, 15 years ago probably. And I knew nothing about what that cheese was or how it existed. And I mean, it has some stink. I mean, it is something that you have to be prepared for. Well, I just can't. There's a memory issue, right? Like, I mean, it has like a body odor stink to it. There's actually a good reason for that. I will never forget. I know what the reason is. I was just going to say, and it was from being in a wine tasting. This person conducting the tasting goes, if you think that this smells kind of like feet, it's because the same bacteria that's on your feet is on this cheese. I was like, oh great, what a sales pitch. It's true. It's called Breva bacterium linens, and it makes that orange kind of slimy outside, but it also makes the interior of the cheese super luscious. Yeah, it'll make your feet slimy if you have a really bad case of it on your skin. It's everywhere in the environment though. Breva bacterium, everybody's friend. And for those that do like washed-rind cheeses, some common wine pairings that you might consider would be an Alsatian Pinot Gris, a Gewurztraminer, we're talking kind of some richer whites here, as well as a pretty concentrated Pinot Noir, if you want to go kind of high quality from Burgundy. I think Rioja would stand up to it well as well. But washed-rind cheeses, give them a shot. They're fantastic. Spot-on, delicious, spot-on. And also, we have not talked about the fact that sparkling wine is another really versatile option here. And I did pour myself a glass of champagne to have along the way, and it's going well with everything, so. As champagne does, I mean, if you're in doubt about what to pair with something, bubbles are almost always the answer. And there are some classic champagne pairings too. Not that you have to stick to them, but triple creme, soft cheeses, bloomy rind cheeses like that are excellent. And of course, there's a cheese called Schaurs that is made in the champagne region, which famously goes together. So there you go. So since you guys are talking about food pairing, I'd like to posit a theory. So as a wine consultant for quite a while, someone would come in with a dish, like they're getting adventurous and they want to serve a dish, and they're like, what wine do you think would go with this? But I don't know that that's necessarily the right way to set up food pairing. I think that 99% of food pairing is just having two things that don't conflict with each other. Serving some slightly sweet wine with an even sweeter food, so it makes the sweet wine taste bitter, and too much herbal versus herbal conflict, or too much acidity versus acidity makes something unpleasant. So I think step one, the most important thing for food pairing is don't cause a conflict. Step two, the most important thing in food pairing is do you like it? Start with things that you like to drink and eat, and then see how they work together. Then that other 1% on top of just making sure that you like it, and making sure that you're not causing a problem, is where the magic actually happens. Yeah, I totally agree with that. I find that the things you are most important are to learn things that are really going to clash or accentuate things to a level that you might not be expecting. So, example, the classic example in beer would be that really hoppy beers, and especially the more old school style of IPA that had a lot of bitterness, bitterness accentuates heat. So, one of the classic pairings, what's kind of interesting about it and what could be kind of frustrating from a consumer standpoint is that you often see people recommending IPAs with hot wings or thai food or Indian food, like, because that it'll make that it'll burst and it'll elevate that. Well, you might like that or you might hate that because it's just going to blow your palate to pieces. But having that bit of knowledge in your toolbox, then you can know, okay, so I can experiment with this. I like spicy food. I like hoppy beers. That is where a lot of the new IPAs that can really shine with spicy food because they're not very bitter, but they're very fruit forward. When you think about how many kinds of sauces and glazes and cuisines combine fruity with hot, I mean, there's millions, right? It crosses cultures and everything else. So if you like the new type of IPA, that is one of the easiest no-brainer thing is like, if you like hot food, try drinking these fruitier IPAs with spicy cuisine because it can be really neat. But know that if it has some bitterness to it, it might crank it up to 11. Chris, what do you pair with something that's creamy, but also can have some kind of innate astringency and bitterness, sharpness, like a blue cheese? So yeah, in that case, you're definitely going to want to look at something with some sweet fruitiness, in my opinion. Blue cheeses are very generally funky, and can be earthy, and definitely salty. So classic pairings, Roquefort and Sauternes, Porte and Stilton, these are classics for a reason. And I'm going to tell you that I agree with everything that's been said about food and wine pairing. There's no magic to it. You definitely just want to make sure things don't clash. But on the other hand, these handful of tried and true classics are such for a very good reason, because somebody at some point realized this is actually magical together. It's not just good together, but it elevates each component. The wine tastes better, the cheese tastes better, or whatever food stuff it is, the beer. A good place to start if you're learning about food and wine pairing or food and beer pairing, is to actually try some of those actual classic pairings and see what makes this work. Like honey-roasted peanut, it's salty, nutty, and sweet all at once, so it's delicious together. Salt and sweet, it just works. Everyone knows that. Can I tell you some of my favorite UGC moments ever, are deciding that I'm tapped out on all of these brutal red wines, and then grabbing a glass of Saturn and heading over and grabbing a chunk of blue cheese and sitting there and watching other One of the great pleasures in life. I have one of those magical experiences going on right now in my mouth, with three-year-old Gouda and a Barberasco. I picked the Barberasco, which is Neviolo, of course, because a lot of people just love bigger Tannic bolder reds. Sometimes we forget that these wines can go with Jesus. You don't just need a heavier, fattier entree with these wines. When you get into these aged hard Jesus, you can pair with your Cabernets and your Neviolo, and your Brunello, and so forth, Rioja, all of these wines. I'm drinking Produtori's 2016 Barberasco, which is absolutely fantastic. It's on the shelf for $39.99. I'm having it with the three-year-old Gouda. It is truly magical. I will say this, like everything in my mouth is just starting to weave together, and all the beautiful parts are accentuated. All of the kind of more tannic elements, because it is still a young wine, are all binding to the cheese, not to my mouth, and it's just beautiful. So go and try it. Grab yourself a Nebbiolo and a three-year-old Gouda and let the magic happen. We got to start recording these in the same room again. Everybody needs to taste everything. But Alisha, I'm going to go out of the limb here and say that Prodatory's Basic Barbaresco is perhaps one of the most consistent and great Nebbiolo-based wines on the shelf. It is stellar year in, year out. They make a ton of single vineyard stuff, but when the year is not good enough to do that, it goes into the basic production. When the year is great, the leftover juice for the regular is super good too. And it's not crazy expensive like a lot of Barolo's are or Barbaresco's are. So good. Great choice. All right, blue cheese, blue cheese. Blue cheese, so yeah, when it comes to blue, funky, salty, intense, I've got a Stilton here. It also has very earthy notes, which I love about it. It's kind of leathery. I drink it or eat it all the time with pork wine or Madeira. I drink your milkshake. That's right. I bring all the boys to the yard, Roger, just if you're wondering. Anyway, it's classic with port. English have a long history of loving port wine due to historical circumstances. It became a classic pairing, as well as port with cheddar. It is the king of British cheeses. Often paired with vintage port that's been aged well, I usually find myself drinking it with tawny, just because I'm not always going to open a bottle of vintage if I'm just hanging around, and I do like to sit around and meditate on the two, and There's always LBV, baby. Yeah, indeed. Also an excellent choice. Don't forget, viewers, that vintage port needs a lot of time in that bottle. While a great recommendation, if you don't have a vintage port that's quite old in your home, and we're talking 10, 20, 30 plus years old, then yeah, an LBV would be great or a Tawny for sure. Plus, if you're just getting into port, I feel you should almost start with the late bottle vintage ones just as like a baseline to then be able to more fully appreciate the vintage ones. I think that's a really good point. Late bottle vintage offers really good quality at remarkably good prices, and the benefit is they're ready to drink on release due to the extended aging in Barrel as opposed to just two years for vintage. An affordable way to taste some age. Yeah, absolutely. So anyway, sweet, fruity, salty, pungent. What could be better? I can't think of much. I have a foolproof, one of those kind of aha. While many pairings can be good as we were getting across earlier, but some are kind of ethereal. Blue cheese and traditionally made wild, spontaneously fermented ales from Belgium. The lambics and the goose's especially go amazingly with blue cheese. Absolutely. They're readily available in our stores. Something like a Lindemans Cuvée Renée, Bone, Marriage parfait, Dry fontaine, Gooses around as well. These need to be tried with blue cheese. It'll blow your mind. Yeah. How about this, Roger? Have you considered ever a Flemish Red? So especially one with a little more sweetness like the Duchess rather than Rodenbach, which I always find that to be quite a bit sweeter, but it has those sour elements that you find in those wild fermented Belgian beers, but it also has a little more malty sweetness and fruit character. What do you think about that? Absolutely. I mean, that hits exactly what you're getting at with the port element. The Flemish Red Ale style is often famously referred to as the Burgundies of Belgium for how wine-like they are. But as you said, they're quite a bit more fruit-forward than, say, like a lot of traditional Burgundies, but they have some of that acidity and structure that you'd have in a wine. But yeah, that's an excellent option. You can even take it a step further. There are some of those Flemish Reds that actually have cherries in them. They made a Cherry Duchess recently, which is quite excellent. Indeed, indeed. Cherry Duchess de Bourgogne? Yeah. Another producer that I wanted to sneak in here real quick, the beers from Unibrew are Belgian inspired, incredible values. Some of my favorite, if you were to just consider a portfolio across the board, literally everything they do is phenomenal. They have an excellent website that's very tuned in to beer and food pairing. So they have specific cheese pairings for literally every beer in their portfolio. So if you haven't had the beers from Unibrew or you haven't had them in a while, I think we're all guilty of that. They're one of those brands where like, oh yeah, they're phenomenal. It's like, when's the last time you bought one? I drank a La Feen du Monde last weekend and just forgot how absolutely incredible that beer is. Yeah, killer, killer beers, Roger. Yeah, the Feen du Monde, how about the bead on that beer? The bottle condition sparkle on that is phenomenal, right? It's so soft and mousse-like. The head on it is one of the best. It's such a dense, thick foam. It's almost like the consistency of a Guinness Nitropore. It's so dense and thick. It's so delicious. All right, last pointers. Wine, beer, cheese, what else you got? Don't forget spirits. I just really want to complicate things. So on the cider tip, I know everybody here is well aware of the Norman combination of apple growing and apple products and their fine, fine pasture land, which results in butter and cheeses like camembert, pear, Pont Lévesque, Leveraux. So there are great ciders from there, but you also get, of course, calvados, which can be beautiful with cheeses like that. Yep. Arminiac as well, I feel, tends to be on the fruitier side from the distillation method they employ. It's a little more rustic, they tend to say. And I think Arminiac is still one of those spirit categories that's so underappreciated. You have tremendous value there. So we carry some phenomenal Arminiacs, so that's something to explore. Yeah. And if you don't want to give the French any of your money, you can buy some good old-fashioned American Apple Jack. Boom. Buy some laird's Apple Brandy. Oldest distillery in America. That's right, folks. Yeah, and an excellent product. So yeah, think along those lines, brandies, whether they're made with grapes or any kind of Eau de Vie, it can be any fruit you desire, can add a lot to your cheese experience. All right, guys, if I hadn't been sitting here eating Cheez-Its this whole time, I would be very hungry right now. I wish I was in the room eating you guys' cheeses. And we got to actually do it in the room together sometime so that we can share some of these delightful tasting pairing discoveries that we've made. Yeah, I would say this is just cheese pairing part one. Stay tuned for part two. Where we get really complicated. The re-cheesening. Then we're going to get real obscure. All right, cool. All right. So this is another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. Thanks for hanging out with us. I hope you didn't find this one too cheesy. Until next time, I'm Greg. I'm Roger. I'm Alicia. And I'm Chris. Keep tasting. Manchego or Roncol, two pretty famous sheep milk cheeses, similar in style, hard, can come in various ages. They get more salty and aggressive, as we were talking about, sharper as they age. Sounds like a brofee cheese.