Text 7122, 148 rader
Skriven 2006-10-31 20:49:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: wine and cheese 515
===========================
Ian's view vindicated:

UC Davis study challenges classic wine-cheese pairings
Janet Fletcher, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, June 16, 2005

For many people, a bottle of red wine and a platter of good cheese
virtually guarantee pleasure ahead. But according to new research
conducted at the University of California at Davis, that time-tested
marriage may be on the skids. 

Graduate student Berenice Madrigal has spent the past year
investigating what sound like the makings of a great party: eight
red wines, eight cheeses and what happens when you serve them
together. 

Thinking of purchasing a nice chunk of cheddar to show off a
favorite red wine from your cellar? Madrigal's study, undertaken for
her master's degree in viticulture and enology, suggests that you
might want to reconsider that plan. 

"Our definition of a good pairing was that the two enhance each
other," says Hildegarde Heymann, professor of sensory science in
Davis' viticulture and enology department and Madrigal's adviser.
"Our work shows this is probably not true very often." 

Madrigal, a petite, soft-spoken 27-year-old from Mexico City, has a
degree in food chemistry from the National Autonomous University of
Mexico and a fondness for cow's-milk Mimolette. But it was Heymann
who steered Madrigal to cheese as a thesis topic, a continuation of
the professor's research into the sensory analysis of wine with
food. Cheese made a suitable subject for exploration because the
department has no kitchen. 

To Heymann's surprise, few sensory scientists had analyzed the
presumed affinity of wine and cheese. A review of the literature
turned up almost nothing. A Swedish scientist, Tobias Nygren, had
looked at white wine with blue cheese -- the cheese mutes white wine
flavors, he found -- but no one apparently had looked methodically
at the intersection of red wine and cheese. 

Madrigal's first task was to assemble and train a tasting panel,
volunteers -- mostly fellow students -- who would be taught to
recognize various attributes in wine and to use identical language
in describing them. For two weeks, the tasters met every day to
master the sensory meaning of 20 common wine descriptors from bell
pepper and berry to astringent and bitter. 

Next they evaluated, tasting blind, the eight wines Madrigal had
selected: two bottles each of Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot
and Syrah. In an effort to get wines of differing styles, Madrigal
had chosen a low-priced and high-priced wine for each varietal pair.
Tasters rated each sample on a 1-to- 10 scale for every attribute.
Then Madrigal juggled the sample order and repeated the tasting
twice to verify her tasters' consistency. 

Following an intensive day of research at Corti Brothers, the
Sacramento fine-foods store, Madrigal settled on eight types: two
hard cheeses (Emmental and Gruyere), two cheddars (from Vermont and
New York), two soft cheeses (mozzarella and Teleme) and two blues
(Gorgonzola and Stilton). Heymann had suggested limiting the samples
to cow's milk cheeses so the analysis didn't get even more
complicated. 

Over sessions that lasted three months, the same trained team of
panelists -- six men and five women -- tasted each wine with each
cheese, then scored the wines on the same 20 attributes they had
evaluated before. Then Madrigal switched the tasting order, and the
panelists repeated the task twice. 

Months of analysis later, Madrigal and Heymann had their results,
captured in a flurry of colorful spider graphs and multidimensional
plots that the average wine lover would be hard-pressed to decipher.
But to cut to the chase, their conclusions may not sit well with
wine and cheese fans. 

In virtually every case, cheese diminished everything the wine had
to say. It muted both desirable traits like berry character and less
desirable traits like astringency and bell pepper. It was an
equal-opportunity silencer, exhibiting largely the same effect on
each varietal, pricey and not. 

From mild Teleme to pungent Gorgonzola, the cheeses made every wine
taste less oaky, less berry-like, less sour. The two blues had
slightly more impact on the wines than the two soft cheeses, but the
differences were insignificant for almost every trait. 

"The popular press tells us it should have gone the other way," says
Heymann, meaning that cheese would enhance the wines. "We would have
assumed that for at least one cheese and one wine, we would have a
hit." 

The one attribute that cheese seemed to accentuate in red wine was
butteriness, a quality more often associated with malolactic
Chardonnays than with reds. But with every other wine trait, cheese
of every sort activated the mute button, a result Heymann can't
easily explain. 

"The decrease of astringency makes sense because you have a coating
of the palate (with cheese)," says the professor. "All you need is a
coating between the mucous membranes and astringent compounds and
you diminish astringency. That is the one effect I would say is a
real effect." 

The other outcomes -- that cheese diminished fruitiness, oakiness or
spiciness -- may be what Heymann call a cognitive effect. In other
words, it's in our heads. We expect that result, so we find that
result. Although she hasn't devised a way to tease apart the impact
of cognition, or expectation, she suspects it's at the root of many
vaunted wine-and-cheese marriages. 

"My 'take home' is, you shouldn't worry about which wine you have
with which cheese," says Heymann. "Have the wine you love with the
cheese you love. " If most cheeses affect most red wines in a
similar way, by turning down the volume, it may be pointless to keep
looking for a match that soars. 

Daniel Baron, winemaker at Silver Oak Wine Cellars in Oakville, says
his extensive if informal research doesn't support the UC Davis
team's conclusions. A cheese enthusiast, Baron says he has invested
a lot of time hunting for cheeses that would complement his famed
Cabernet Sauvignons. 

"It's been a long journey," says the winemaker, "but in my
experience, the old rules of wine and cheese pairing hold true." 

For him, that means no blue cheese ("It really brings out the
bitterness in a red wine"), no triple-cream cheeses ("iffy") and a
distinct preference for well-aged cow's and sheep's milk cheeses
such as aged Gouda, Vella Dry Jack and Manchego -- cheeses that he
finds not just tolerable with his wine but flattering. 

Other tasters who, like Baron, have experienced a ghastly clash
between dry red wine and pungent blue cheese may suspect that
something physiological is to blame. As for the utter rightness on
the tongue of Vella Dry Jack and Silver Oak Cabernet -- how does
Heymann explain that? 

"There's that saying, 'Perception is reality,' " says the professor.
"If you perceive that the wine is better with the cheese, then it
is. What's happening in your head is no less real than what's
happening on your palate, but it's probably different." 

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/06/16/WIGFFD8IBQ1.DTL

___ Blue Wave/386 v2.30
--- Platinum Xpress/Win/WINServer v3.0pr5
 * Origin: Try Our Web Based QWK: DOCSPLACE.ORG (1:123/140)