Wine and Cheese

You'll have to admit, wine and cheese is a bit of a cliché these days - but some clichés are clichés for a reason. This one's a cliché because it's delicious. But if you're going to enjoy wine with cheese, you'll have to be careful lest one overshadow the other.

As with all food, not all cheese is created equal. Some of it is creamy, some of it is chewy, some of it is mild and some pleasantly intense.

Soft cheeses are generally the least intense in terms of flavor. This means you'll want a lighter, crisper wine: a white or one of the less full-bodied reds.

Hard cheeses, on the other hand, almost demand a red. A full-bodied white will sometimes work, but if it's at all aged, you'll want something with strong tannins.

Blue Cheeses are, if anything, stronger-flavored than hard cheese, and so you'll definitely want a red. Stilton is, in fact, one of the few cheeses that can stand up to a port.