Did you know that your favorite fall drinks pair brilliantly with cheese?
Fact: Come fall’s first chill, everything should be served hot and infused with a heavy, heady dose of warming spices. That goes for drinks, too. Folks across the globe have been mulling beverages—the process of heating, sweetening with ingredients such as honey, and seasoning with aromatics such as cinnamon, nutmeg, and clove—for centuries. The ancient Greeks and Romans duke it out for the claim to inventing mulled wine. Evidence dates back to at least 20 A.D., when the stuff was boiled and spiked with honey, dates, and spices like saffron and peppercorn. Ahead of the twentieth century, mulled beer was a popular tavern tipple in England and the US, commonly heated over a hearth inside specialty kitchenware (a boot ale warmer or flip iron).
Just as the mulling process brings out the magic in beverages (even in your friend’s Two-Buck Chuck from Trader Joe’s), pairing cheese with these well-spiced, warm sips helps a wedge “reveal its secrets,” according to Casie Wiginton of Antonelli’s Cheese in Austin, Texas. “Having a warm beverage preheats the palate and allows us to get more from the tasting experience,” says the multi-hyphenate cheese-and-drink expert. “Most mulled beverages are also on the sweet side, and the sugar in those beverages really bounces off the savoriness of the cheese in a playful way.” When matching drinks with cheese, Wiginton leans on emotion and lived experience. “If a cheese and drink pull at the same specific nostalgia, then there’s a pretty good chance they’ll play well together,” she says. This process works particularly well with her mulled beverage and cheese pairings of choice, as both are best shared with friends and loved ones.
WASSAIL (HOT MULLED CIDER) + JASPER HILL FARM WINNIMERE
Winnimere, a favorite of Wiginton’s, is a raw-milk cheese with the consistency of creamy pudding. “Because it’s washed and wrapped in spruce bark, the way I describe this cheese is that it tastes like walking through the woods on a cold November morning with a pocket full of bacon,” she says. The expert pairs it with a dry, bright, hard cider such as Texas Keeper No. 1 that’s been mulled with fresh cider, brown sugar, mead, mulling spices, ginger, and dried orange slices (pro tip: mull everything in a percolator). “The sweetness and the acidity of the cider bounce off the creaminess and earthiness of this cheese, and the mulling spice, combined with the woodsy aromas from the spruce, creates a beautiful dance of deliciousness and nostalgia.”
HOT MULLED WINE + 1605 MANCHEGO
If she’s sipping hot mulled wine, Wiginton loves to go “a little sheepy” with her cheese, opting for a “cozy wool blanket” of a wedge with a kiss of salt and a few tyrosine crystals. “The mulling spices play so well with the lanoline notes of the 1605 Manchego, the sweetness of the wine is balanced by the saltiness of the cheese, and the tannins from the wine and spices are tamed by the richness of the sheep’s milk butterfat,” she says.
MULLED CRANBERRY COCKTAIL + NEAL’S YARD DAIRY COLSTON BASSETT STILTON
Cranberry and Stilton are a perfect marriage, especially when the former comes by way of a cocktail containing sweetened cranberry juice, warming spices, and some optional Grand Marnier and St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram. “The sweet and sour of the cranberry really balances out the salty, peppery, French-onion-soup flavor of the Stilton and, when their powers combine, they become an entire holiday meal in a bite and a sip,” says Wiginton.
CHEESE-WASHED BOURBON WITH A PHO BACK + UPLANDS CHEESES PLEASANT RIDGE RESERVE
For the funkiest pairing of the four, the cheese is infused into this savory tipple. Wiginton coarsely shreds Pleasant Ridge Reserve into a glass container, then pours bourbon overtop and lets the flavors mingle for 24 hours. “I prefer bourbon because its vanilla and oatmeal cookie notes play so well with the brown butter flavors in the cheese,” she says. Once macerated, she’ll strain the bourbon, chill it, and pour it into a shot glass. Then (this is where the mulled part comes in), the drink is chased with a rich, deeply spiced pho broth. “The broth almost exactly mirrors the chicken bouillon and roasted carrot flavor of the cheese, and the spices in the broth tie with the oatmeal cookie notes from the bourbon,” she says.
