The Absolute Best Wine To Pair With Sharp Cheeses, According To A Sommelier

Cheese and wine are a timeless duo, and what better way to enjoy a flavorful glass of wine than with a bitingly sharp cheese. While mild cheeses may be more accommodating with a broader range of wines, sharp cheeses have bold personalities and robust flavors that require a more knowledgeable touch to tame. To that end, we reached out to Andrew Limberg, sommelier and operations manager at Moon Rabbit, to ask him what he considered to be the best wine for the job.

"I really like slightly older off-dry rieslings with sharp cheeses," Limberg told Tasting Table. Dry riesling is sometimes overshadowed by sweet riesling (which makes for an excellent dessert wine), but the fact that dry rieslings are underrated is all the more reason to enjoy them before the mainstream catches on. Limberg specifically notes that he prefers off-dry (read, semi-sweet) for this particular use case, but he gets more specific than that. "German Spatlese or Auslese rieslings ... mellow out a little and the sweetness isn't cloying with the cheeses."

Spatlese means "late harvested," and Auslese means "select harvest," both of which refer to how long the grapes remain on the vine. Of the two, Auslese grapes spend more time on the vine allowing them to grow more ripe, which tends to create a sweeter flavor profile than Spatlese grapes. You can find a dry riesling in both styles if you know what you're looking for.

Before we get further into the wine pairing, we ought to take a second and clear up any confusion around sharp cheeses. Sharp cheese is an interesting category because, legally, it has no meaning, though we still use it all the time as a descriptor. Most people correlate sharpness with cheddar, but there are other cheeses that the term applies to, such as Asiago and Manchego. Sharpness is the antithesis of mildness in this context, so we're essentially looking for cheeses that have strong acidity and a flavor profile with a bite. The term "sharp" is quite vague beyond that, which makes it difficult for consumers to know what exactly cheese manufacturers mean when they use it.

The important part for us is the acidic bite, which pairs really well with the strong minerality of riesling wines — particularly German rieslings. If you're a fan of punchy flavors that pop, this wine pairing is definitely something to keep your eye on. Limberg's recommendation of off-dry riesling means the slight sweetness will help bring cohesion to those flavors that might otherwise clash. If you're looking to dial in your wine pairing here, the sweetness of the wine would be a good place to start. For a more chaotic and wild dynamic, decreasing the sweetness of the wine will let the minerality do the talking, and vice versa. If you want something really bold, try pairing sharp cheddar with Buffalo Trace bourbon.