Your Ultimate Wine & Cheese Guide, Sorted!

January 8, 2026

Your Ultimate Wine & Cheese Guide, Sorted!

Make wine and cheese your thing with our simple yet extensive primer that matches the most popular international wines with the cheese that was just made for it. Your tantalizing gourmet experience begins here. Cheers!

The art of pairing wine and cheese is an enviable gem for an amateur wine expert to stock up on considering how historically woven in, this culinary tradition is, to the fibre of both serious wine education and casual soirees. Wine and cheese can be as high brow a subject of discussion or as fleeting as the entre to a nine course dinner but it will always be delicious part of the conversation. So here’s a simple and concise treatise that trots out the world’s most loved and consumed wines and cheeses and pairs them up with crisp explanations about why the match works. This exercise is as imperfect as it is fun and a treat to the senses. There’s a lot to like and discover about this ancient culinary marriage, the modern world remains firmly in love with. Enjoy!

Phillipe Gonet, Blanc de Blanc, Brut NV & Brie

Champagne is that foremost sparking aperitif, everyone in the room loves to top up on and finds an ideal match if not a further bump of flavour with a creamy dollop of brie. Brie is a soft cheese first produced in the Middle Ages and became the first choice of French Royalty and is today, relished by all classes, especially the fans of bubblies. Brie’s creamy texture and nutty streaks complement the citrus and toasty tones of the Phillipe Gonet, Blanc de Blanc while the Champagne’s bright acidity in turn gently sears through the soft cheese’s buttery layers. This ritzy coupling of two contrasting French delights ain’t a bad one to begin a Sunday brunch or brighten a Monday morning even.

Kara Tara, Pinot Noir & Gruyere

Pinot Noir is a pricey customer on every front, be it nurturing the grape to harvest, vinification or the far more challenging task of cheese pairing. No, seriously, Pinot Noir is a uniquely enchanting wine that pushes winemakers and sommeliers to their limits and yet no one complains because the effort is almost always well rewarded. And so it goes on the diary front where the hard Swiss cheese Gruyère embraces and enlivens the graceful Pinot Noir with earthy and nutty character. Kara Tara Pinot Noir, produced in South Africa’s coolest region of Elgin Valley, sees its delicate body and notes of cherry and spices lifted by Gruyere’s complex flavours and salty twang that complement rather than dominate this finicky yet elegant red wine.

Vietti Moscato D’Asti & Gorgonzola

Getting two sets of vastly contrasting flavours to throw down is an adventurous risk that can be its own reward. In the case of subtly carbonated and pleasingly sweet Italian white and an unforgivingly funky cheese divined in the same region of Piedmont, the reward is effectively doubled. Gorgonzola is a blue mold cheese with a sharp taste that can shock the uninitiated but enthrall the connoisseur with its pungent, barnyard like flavours. It’s a taste worth acquiring and squaring off with a chilled glass of Piedmontese Moscato from the appellation of Asti, which ably rounds off the Gorgonzola’s sharp edges with sweetness while the blue cheese’s creamy character lengthens the sparkling wine’s peachy palate.

Saint Clair Sauvignon Blanc & Feta

Feta is a soft cheese indigenous to Greece, divined from goat and sheep milk and counts many aficionados for its creamy salty notes. This famous staple ingredient in many a summery salad recipe and perpetual companion to olive bowls is almost a natural choice for the similarly popular zesty white wine Sauvignon Blanc. This crisp white’s acidity and tropical fruit complement Feta’s salty character the saltiness of the cheese. The wine’s acidity cuts through the richness of the cheese, creating a delightful balance. Sauvignon Blanc’s floral notes also pair well with the nutty flavor of feta. So there’s nothing quite like a Sunday seafood salad teeming with fresh bricks of feta, airdropped onto sliced crustacean and rocket leaves, sat beside our fab white Marlborough.

Thelema Cabernet Sauvignon With Aged Cheddar

Cheddar is the pride of English dairy and aged cheddar is a level up. The English village of Cheddar pushes this hard cheese beyond its set piece herbaceous flavours, bringing out sharp and intense character that meets a proper match in new world Cabernet Sauvignon. It doesn’t come much better than South African ‘Cabs’ produced on the Western Cape, finely represented by Thelema’s signature style. This full bodied red vinified by master winemaker Gyles Webb in Stellenbosch soften the sharpish flavours of the aged cheddar, taking in the cheese’s fatty texture to complement its big flavours and tannins. It’s a gourmet win-win that doesn’t stop giving.

AIX, Provence Rosé & Burrata

Burrata has been trending longer than some governments have held power and the continual success of this soft Italian cheese is no surprise to gourmands who put it to multiple sumptuous uses. A most promising mission entails matching a large orb of the popular cheese with tasting a generous scoop with Rosé, especially from Provence. Just our luck that we happen to store the top of the class AIX Provence Rosé that balances delicate red fruit and an acidic rush that slices through Burrata’s rich creamy texture encased by mozzarella. The blush wine and fluffy white orb make as pretty an Instagram pic as they do, a summery pairing for the ages.

Kesselstatt, RK Riesling & Roquefort

Roquefort is an unapologetically pungent blue cheese that gourmands train their palates to acquire a fondness for though no such effort is needed to start liking elegant German Riesling, especially this expression produced by Reichsgraf von Kesselstatt that has harnessed the Mosel’s vineyards into grand vintages for nearly five decades. The French take Roquefort quite seriously, legislating its production in the Roquefort-sur-Soulzon appellation as do the Germans with Mosel Valley Riesling. The pairing of these two very contrasting agrarian gems is assuredly devoid of any bureaucratic oversight and fares nicely. The tangy blue cheese is tempered by the dry, flinty Mosel Riesling’s subtle fruit and exuberance, softening the cheese’s landing while Roquefort does the delicate Riesling’s palate a good favour, amplifying its notes like a skilled orchestra conductor.

Susana Balbo, Crios Malbec & Edam

This pairing deserves its own long chapter but in the interest of brevity, speculate just how a semi-hard northerly Netherland cheese found an unlikely match in Argentina’s red wine star that isn’t originally Argentine. Now isn’t that a story to tell. Edam is a smooth and easy to like cheese with nutty tones that are considerably lifted by a boldly fruity and tannic Malbec rated 91 points by Robert Parker. This vintage Malbec expresses a bounty of red cherries and spices that elevate Edam’s salty and caramel notes, lending the cheese, depth and a richness which twinkles as a worthy bonus for nailing this long shot pairing.

Brancaia, TRE & Parmesan

Parmesan or Parmigiano Reggiano if you go for grand authenticity is probably the world’s most top of mind hard cheese and sits at the very top of the pecking order of Italian cheese. Native to Emilia-Romagna where monks began making the hard cheese in the middle ages, Parmesan boasts a range of flavours from salty, sweet and grassy, to nutty and earthy and the very elusive umami, tipping it as a likely accompaniment to the equally diverse palate of Brancaia Tre. This baby Super Tuscan blend that marries three grapes picked from a similar number of vineyards, beams with wholesome cherries, spice and cocoa, which highlight Parmesan’s flavours even as the hard cheese adds a rich veneer to the elegant red blend, stretching its tannic finish to crown a gourmet pairing worth every cent of bringing it together.