Wine Pairing Story (2)

Somewhere in the Loire Valley . I'll keep the location undisclosed , if you don't mind . This is a place I visit from time to time . Marguerite, on the picture , and her husband, live in a house backed to a hill . They both have always lived here , and they are busy everyday tending their vegetable garden, the orchard, and taking care of their two goats . Because she is making a great goat cheese with the milk of these only two goats . When I happen to be around, I can't but make a detour, say hello and buy a couple a cheeses, grey and white . Rare privilege of the initiates...The goats' place is the shed partly carved into the rock of the hill . She takes them everyday to a fenced meadow, walking them along paths where they can also have fresh grass... The small cheese production is interrupted sometimes in spring , when baby goats are born ( she sells them away ) .When I buy her some cheese, I have the feeling to put my hands on a product wich miraculously escaped the regulatory folly of the european law makers . These smart bacteria-obsessed individuals have forced every cheese maker to build aseptized rooms with white tiled walls and to invest in other expensive hospital gadgetry. I am not sure they understand that a cheese is nothing more than a sum of trillions of bacterias mysteriously tamed into a civilized delicacy...

She usually has whites and greys . The fresh, white ones , are firm, fat, and have the tactile touch of the Saint Florentin cheese . But the taste is definitely goat cheese . The grey ones are fresh too, but they are at a later stage than the whites, and have received their charcoal coating wich is not only nice for the colour and to bring contrast with the white inside, but helps the mould make its cheese-making job . These grey cheeses have this great typical firm-but-soft texture that you find in fresh goat cheese .Local going with local, I chose a Loire Valley wine of course , to pair with them : A Hubert Sinson Valencay 2002 , an estate located in Meusnes, near the Cher river . Hubert sinson does not use casks to mature his wines, and they give back fully what the grape varieties and the soil ( here, the famous silex, the "pierre à fusil" ) have to offer . Assemblage is here 80% Sauvignon and 20% Chardonnay . The crisp and dry Sauvignon is the best friend of goat cheese . Chardonnay will bring roundness and length . Plus , it will help the wine to better age .I usually eat the white goat cheese with sugar ( so, no wine with ), great taste . Sugar is quite hard to mix, due to the firmness of the cheese . If you are a non-sugar type, try it with parsley on a thin slice of bread, along with crunching into new onions ... That's the way many people like them around here . And sip the wine .
We usually eat the grey goat cheese alone, I mean without bread or anything else, except the wine , wich goes beautifully with it . I can tell you that even though these artisanal cheeses are oversized compared to those you find in the stores, they don't last very much once they reached our home...

Comments

[Alder]

Good lord this posting makes me want to weep. Now THAT is real food. It's 9 in the morning but I would gladly devour that cheese and wine.

Great photos, too, Bert. Awesome.

[Iris]

I love to come back to these photos and what you've written about Marguerite from time to time - and like Alder, it nearly makes me weep - from pleasure and from nostalgia - to know that people, who live like this and just make delicious things, because that's the only way they know to do it, are " une espèce en voie de disparition".

Thank you for this article!