We Asked An Expert How To Build The Ultimate Holiday Cheese Board

Whether you're planning a holiday party for two or a crowd, a cheese board is always a stunning centerpiece that's as beautiful as it is delicious. In honor of this wintertime favorite, we asked an expert how to build the ultimate holiday cheese board. In an interview with Tasting Table, Matthew Rose, partner of Fairfield and Greenwich Cheese Company, recommends going all out with a seasonal focus. "The holiday board is all about going big and treating yourself. Remember to eat and drink with the seasons and enjoy the cooler air with delicious warming and savory flavors. Chocolate, caramel, cinnamon and toffee are all fair game for the holiday season and deserve to be embraced."

While Rose's initial recommendations may sound like ingredients to build a dessert board, baking spices and the complex flavors in chocolate, caramel, and toffee are complementary flavors to pair with cheese. In fact, chocolate and cheese are a popular pairing, as the bittersweet flavors in chocolate stand up to and balance the richness of salty, sharp cheese. Caramel and toffee offer a burnt sugar sweetness as well as nuanced textures that, together with a slice of cheese, make for the perfect sweet and savory bite. You could even combine the sweet ingredients by embellishing your cheese board with different flavors of chocolate bars, like Ghirardelli's dark chocolate and sea salt caramel squares or an Endangered Species dark chocolate cinnamon and cayenne bar.

Warming spices and rich sweets are seasonal pairings for your cheese board, but what about the main attraction? According to Rose, cheese is also a seasonal commodity. "There are lots of delicious dense, nutty cheeses that come to maturity just in time for the holidays such as Gruyere and Comte that have very accessible flavor profiles and pair with lots of savory flavors." Cheese available in the winter is made from milk taken from cows, goats, or sheep during the summer months. The summer offers the freshest, most high quality and diverse array of grasses and flowering plants for grazing, which in turn results in the tastiest cheeses. 

Gruyere and comté are considered mountain cheeses, harvested and aged from summer cows grazing in alpine pastures. They are also ooey, gooey, fatty types of cheese that suit the cold winter diet. Other alpine cheeses that ripen in time for winter include semi-hard cheeses like cheddar and gouda. Stilton is another winter cheese from England that is often compared to Roquefort. Aged sharp cheddars debut in the fall, so they might barely make the cutoff for your holiday party cheese board. Of course, you want the highest quality artisanal grass-fed cheeses over a store-bought packaged block of cheese. You can ask the cheesemonger at your local shop or cheese section about the seasonality of the cheese in question or inquire as to how long the cheese has aged to calculate the cheese's seasonality.

Per our tips for building the best cheese board, accoutrements complement the savoriness of cheese with acidity, sweetness or even spicy heat. In keeping with the opulent and indulgent theme of a holiday party, Rose gives elegant and exclusive suggestions for imported accoutrements."This is the time to splurge for the real deal accoutrements! Get the authentic Amarena cherries, go for the imported Sicilian orange slices in syrup, get the stuffed prunes and the hazelnuts from Piedmont," Rose said. "Don't forget seasonal indulgences like Shortbread cookies and biscuits and gingerbread!"

Fruit and nuts are the most common cheese board accoutrement, for which Rose appropriately opts for winterized dried and canned versions. Canned fruit in syrup and dried fruit also offer much more sweetness and a concentrated fruit flavor that'll cut through the savory fat of your cheese. Citrus may be a winter harvest, but Sicilian orange slices in syrup are much more complex, offering a balance of bright acidity, sugary sweetness, and bitter peel. Amarena cherries are a step above the overly sweet maraschinos, with a complex sweetness and a sour finish. If you're wondering what the Piedmont stuffed prunes are stuffed with, the answer is more prunes. The pureed prunes used for stuffing are often flavored with lemon or orange zest and vanilla. Gingerbread cookies contain spicy ginger and cinnamon along with a mellow sweetness to pair with a creamy, savory cheese. Walker's all-butter shortbread biscuits are the ultimate crunchy upgrade to a plain old cracker.