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When I was working in restaurants, I started cooking with Taleggio on a regular basis. I love northern Italian cuisine, and I always have. This cheese makes up one of the styles of regional cooking in Lombardy. It’s such beauty to work with as a cook, because it’s such an easy cheese to put on a plate. It really makes vegetables and fish shine with its brininess, and orange fruit flavors. It also has very delicious meaty, and fatty flavors.
For those not familiar, Taleggio is from Lombardy, a state in the north of Italy. It is made in the mountainous Alps of Val Taleggio traditionally, but has made its way down south into the valley of Lombardy as well. The cheese starts out its life as cow’s milk, and is then processed, blended, poured into a wooden mold, washed with a seawater, and aged.
The result is an earthy-tasting washed orange rind on the outside that gives the cheese its flavor. Many different cultures of bacteria are responsible for its stinky taste and smell, including one bug commonly associated with human body odor. And that’s a cheese fact for you.
Taleggio is part of the same family as French Brie, and shares its creamy, fatty texture with its French cousin. In all variations of washed rind cheeses, the cheese is often describes as funky, and stinky, with orange flavors, honey flavors, and cured meat flavors as well as earthy-mushroom flavors.
When discussing pairing Taleggio, we need to look for specific characteristics and discern what would be a good compliment. Unlike in my article about St. Joseph, a peppery, rich, mineralic wine, we are looking for a pairing for a fatty, stinky, domineering cheese, while working backwards from solid to liquid. Generally speaking, we want to find liquid pairings for solid foods anyway, but the methodology in doing so well, is very different.
St. Joseph is a very easy wine to pair, and shares a lot in common with a ton of different cheeses. Washed rind cheeses do not, and require a lot more processing power and care. Let me take some time to lay out my concerns, and see if you follow along.
Here’s what we know: It pairs well with lean meat, and orange citrus fruit, higher acid cut-through foods like pickles. It’s a fatty cheese, and does not work with prosciutto, or oily rich wine. Due to its dense fruit flavors, and creamy nature it not pair with sweet, low acid wine, or aromatic wine.
If I needed to pair are red wine to Taleggio, I would be looking for something with strong acidity and low sugar, that has sharp red-fruit flavors. I would also be looking for something with decent firm tannin to wash my palette from the fatty cheese. That being said, the wine would still need to have a light mouthfeel, and not be rich or decadent in any way.
When it comes to pairing Taleggio with a red wine, I would avoid anything plummy or majority dark fruit. The roundness of the wine would clash with the fat of the cheese and create a gross soupy mess in the mouth, making it difficult to distinguish any flavors. The wine and cheese would be at near constant war with no clear victor.
When it comes to a full-flavor very brash cheese like Taleggio, you want to play a more reserved wine that will be a better compliment, filling in the background with details, rather than attempting to talk over the cheese. You also want to avoid high alcohol, hot wines, and vintages. Pairing this with a new oak aged Priorat for example, would be a disaster, not just because of its pruny, pepperiness, but because the weightiness, and higher sugar would cover the nuisance in the cheese, forcing it to reveal only its strongest, most pungent flavors, such as rotting fish heads, and moldy cardboard.
All of these parameters in mind, we are looking for a light bodied, heavy tannin, oak aged wine; with soft red fruit, i.e pomegranate, raspberry, with a mineralic, truffle underbelly. What wine region produces have I just described? I can think of many, but two really good candidates: Piemonte, and Beaujolais.
My primary choice, seeing as this is an Italian cheese, would be a decent quality Langhe Nebbiolo for around twenty-five dollars a bottle. Langhe, unable to carry the regions more prestigious names of Barbaresco or Barolo, is a high quality, excellent value area for daily-drinking table wines. It may not have the aging capacity of its older brothers, but it definitely has the acidity, tannin, and body to carry Taleggio, without breaking the bank.
I don’t mean to disparage Langhe in any way, some of the wines the region produces are better quality than Barbaresco or Barolo, and some age extremely well, however when it comes to this particular assignment, I think Langhe tends to lack the body or laborious complexity in general. All in all, they’re just better value, and there’s no shame in drinking them young.
The specific wine I’d look for is readily available from a major vintner. It’s the fabulous G.D Vajra Langhe Nebbiolo 2018, or even 2020 - also very good. As I said, this wine can be enjoyed young. They are available at most major retailers and wine vendors, and run no more that twenty-five dollars a bottle. A good backup would be Rugerri Corsini Langhe Nebbiolo 2018, if it’s easier to find. Same price point, about twenty-five dollars a bottle.
If you’re not one for Nebbiolo, or want something a little less dusty, say because you have other food items you’re serving, and need an all-rounder, try a Beaujolais. Beaujolais will be fresher-tasting, less woody, less complex, fruitier, and even more acetic. I specifically would look for a lesser Cru, as they’re excellent value, and I’m a value shopper. Though they are a bit more difficult to find, Chiroubles tend to have excellent weight and acidity, redcurrant and raspberry fruit with a lovely palette-cleaning tannin.
I would recommend Damien Coquelet Chiroubles 2016, it’s the one with the chicken on the front. It’s very reasonably priced at twenty-five dollars per bottle, and has a very nice earthy must, and bretty barnyard note in the middle with a brash strawberry finish, this will bring out the earthiness in cheese rind, and compliment the dry clementine flavor in the cheese. As a backup look for George Deboeuf Fleurie 2017, this is very comparable in quality and price; it is also available at some major supermarkets.
Let’s change gears fast, and enter the world of whites. Just like with reds we want something that is light bodied, complimentary, and fruity. We also need sharp acidity to cut through the fat, and we want something with good minerality, and light fruit zest, like apple and pear. With whites we want to avoid wines that are excessively perfumed, that will be too complicated for the palette, such as Gewürztraminer.
So, to recap, we are looking for a light bodied, lightly oaked, zippy, earthy white wine, with elegant tree fruit and non-complex nose. I can think of quite a few regions that would do the job nicely, but I think white Bordeaux, and Anjou, specifically Chenin Blanc.
I think we will start in Anjou, my recommendation here would be the lovely Le Fief Noir La Cueillette des Oiseaux Anjou Chenin 2020. This is a young wine with a lot of lovely, bright character. On the nose, you can expect a lot of apricot, granny smith apple, and vanilla. There is a very unexpected mushroom quality, and nice tannin. The finish is incredible minerality, truly a white to write home about on its own, and an absolutely perfect fit for the likes of Taleggio. It’s reserved, yet punchy.
When we are looking at Bordeaux, I like the mineral soils, and grassy earthiness of Pessac-Léognan. This region pumps out absolute stunners, year after year and though it is an expensive area, you still can find excellent value. Ch. Haut-Vigneau Blanc Pessac-Léognan 2019 is a perfect example of Bordeaux Sauvignon Blanc at its best. It’s zippy, with flavors of cut grass, lime, pineapple, and cedar with excellent minerality, and balance. It retains its lightness but still manages a creamy finish with some nice herbal flavors like cut parsley. Affordable bottles are hard to come by in this area, though.
I have one last pairing recommendation, that is kind of a wild card. If you are looking for something to excite your guests, or bring vibrance to a charcuterie board, or even just to enjoy while unwinding on a Sunday after church, this one is for you.
Dom. LaFond Tavel Roc-Épine 2019 is a Grenache based rosé with pungent strawberry, apricot, and watermelon fruit and a lovely minerality. On the nose, this wine is crisp, acetic, and dry. It has a balanced persona, with delicate tannin characteristics. Moreover, the earthy truffle flavors on the mid-palette are rather interesting - so is the dry clementine finish, perfect for the cheese!
Now I’d like to pick a winner, because I detest when wine writers, and columnists say, “The best pairing is the one that you like!” I recognize of course tasting is subjective, and preferences factor in, and certain conditions do play a role in taste, and blah blah blah, but that’s a totally flippant thing to say.
Why even write a column if the best pairing is what I, the reader think is best? Why not grab any plonk at Kroger suck it down in a water glass, if I think that is best? Why would I waste my time reading an article by someone who knows less than I do?
The Langhe wins.
That’s all,
~K
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