Last Sunday we’ve been to a cheese and wine tasting session with a group of French expats (and English people practising their French) living in Bristol. It was fun, tasty and truly interesting. We’ve tasted cheeses that we didn’t know and the choice of wines was perfect.

It took place at a restaurant called One30 and organised by Lionel Periner, French expat himself working as Restaurant Manager of Bell’s Diner.

The first cheese was French and called Le Petit Fiancé des Pyrénées. As its name says, it is made in the Pyrénées, in the South-West of France. It’s a goat cheese, whose paste is soft with ivory-coloured and whose texture is silky, firm and smooth. I had never tasted a goat cheese like this and I liked the delicate saltiness given by the rind.
A glass of Sauvignon Blanc 2007 Domaine de La Gitonnière from Touraine was served with it. This wine is green yellow colour and the nose is petty elegant with lemon flavour. The mouth is fresh and with a good balance palate.

The second cheese was a Brillat Savarin. Brillat-Savarin is a soft, white-crusted cow’s milk cheese. It is a triple cream Brie that is luscious, creamy and faintly sour. Brillat-Savarin is produced all year round, mainly in Normandy.
To drink with, Lionel suggested a Pacific Rim Chenin Blanc 2005 from Santa Cruz (California) of Bonny Doon. It has a pale yellow colour. The nose is fruity like white fruit (pear) and the palate is off dry just to continue with the creamy cheese. It was a superb match.

The third cheese was a Coulommiers with a strong flavour, due to a period of maturation of 4 to 5 weeks.
It was also served with a Pacific Rim Chenin Blanc 2005 from Santa Cruz (California) of Bonny Doon.

The fourth cheese was another French cheese, which I personally love: le Vacherin Mont D’or. It’s a cheese made from cow’s milk in the region of Jura. This washed rind soft cheese is particularly runny and traditionally contained in a box made with spruce bark.
This is where the red wine comes in, with a Fitou Domaine Bertrand Bergé 2006 from the Languedoc-Roussillon region in the South of France. This wine is a blend with Carignan and Grenache, with a purple colour. The nose is simple with red fruit and just a hint of sweet spice. Mouth is light full body and you’ve got soft tannins.

The last two cheeses were British. The first one was a Montgomery Cheddar made in South Somerset in a traditional way by the Montgomery family. This unpasteurized cheese has a rich and fruity flavour with quite a dry texture.
It was served with a glass of Sherry Oloroso Barbadillo (full dry), which is a variety of Sherry aged oxidatively for a longer time, thus producing a darker and richer.

Finally we’ve tasted an English blue cheese made from goat’s cheese, called Harbourne Blue. It’s a white, firm and crumbly cheese, produced in Devon.
Lionel also suggested a white sweet wine for this one: a Pacherenc du Vic-Bilh Domaine Capmartin 2007 (South-West of France). It’s a blend of Gros and Petit Manseng with an intense, deep, gold colour and fabulous ripe exotic fruit aromas (guava). On the palate it is luscious, sweet with a great underlying richness leaving a clean finish with intense ripe fruit flavours. A wonderful, versatile wine which could be served on its own or with creamy blue cheese.

I’ve really enjoyed this cheese & wine tasting. We’ve had a great time and it’s always good to get together with fellow expats to talk about food, isn’t it?

To see this afternoon as a story, visit our Storytlr page or click here.

(Article written in collaboration with Lionel Periner)

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