Pairing whisky and cheese

So I decided to try out something new, again (you’ll be seeing a lot of that here on this blog).

Yes, I know that cheese usually gets paired with wine, but let me tell you, cheese with whisky goes at least as well paired with this wonderful Roquefort blue cheese for example. I know, this is one stinky cheese, but once you taste it with whisky, you’ll forget about the strong smell, you may even like it ! I know my french friends would initially disagree with this, but I’m sure they’ll come around once they taste this 😉

Best pairing with this blue cheese is with a good smoky scotch. It’s quite a unique taste! 

This is of course just one type of cheese that you can taste with your whisky, you can try a lot more combinations. As long as you respect the principle in this type of pairing you’ll be fine, the principle here is balance. So when choosing your pairing make sure that you pair a powerful whisky with a cheese with a powerful taste, and of course body with body, flavor with flavor, this is done the same way as with wine and cheese. In other words, a stinky blue cheese requires a strong whisky, while soft and creamy cheeses work better with smoother and lighter whisky.

It also helps if you go for a good salt and fat content in the cheese, to balance out the flavors and body of the whisky, again, keyword here is balance.

Some say that peated whisky does not go well with cheese, as it’s a very strong whisky and can overpower most cheese flavors, but from my experience a peated whisky goes paired very well with a strong blue cheese, but I guess this is a matter of preference and I encourage you to try this yourself to see if it’s for you or not.

Pair smoky or spicy Scotch whiskies, such as the Talisker (like I did here), with a stronger cheese like Roquefort. With sweeter whisky like Glenmorangie, try a softer cheese such as brie. To have some variety, you can have a cheese plate that includes sharp cheddar, swiss, havarti, and gouda, go nuts ! :-))

One of the combos I’ve tried is the Aberlour 12y with a bit soft creamy goat cheese.
This type of cheese goes well with the medium bodied Speyside Aberlour, I got the non chill-filtered version here, but you ca go for the normal one too.

Like with most pairing types, there a lot of combinations you can do, so I would be interested to know what wild and foolish combinations you came up with on this whisky and cheese pairing topic.

So please, do share you experience, good and bad. If it’s good then please share so we can have some of that goodness. If it’s bad, well, at least we’ll have a few laughs :-)) and we’ll know to keep away from the bad pairings 😉

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Andrei Muresan

My name is Andrei, Andrei-Paul Muresan. I’m an IT professional, born in the wonderful year of 1982, in the heart of Transylvania (for people who don’t know, the heart of Transylvania is a city called Cluj-Napoca, located in Eastern Europe, in Romania to be more exact). Here’s a photo of me, just to put a face to the name 😉 I mentioned Transylvania because most people are more likely to know where Transylvania is and not where Romania is 🙂 oh and by the way, vampires, they’re just ghost stories, sorry to disappoint everybody. As you might expect, given my profession, I’m passionate about technology and everything that surrounds it, but I am also a great spirits fan, and when I say spirits I mean scotch, whisk(e)y and cognac, and I also enjoy a good cigar (I never say no to a good cigar). I like to mix all that with a good tune and also a good game, I own a couple of game consoles. I am, by no means, an expert in the scotch/whisk(e)y/cognac/cigar world, but I am keen on learning everything there is to know about it, so I’m launching an invitation to you, to join me in this virtual journey as we learn together.

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