tough food match: Terrine au Bleu d'Auvergne

Thanks for the notes,. As to the match, I'd agree that's a tough one. The blue cheese is probably more to blame that eggs. I mostly go with sweeter wines with blue cheese, usually clashes with reds, But on other hand sweet wines aren't my first thought for terrine. I guess I'd try to steer for middle ground, with a Spatlese Riesling or demi- sec Loire Chenin blanc, from vintages with good acidity. Don't know it would be magic, but doubt it would clash,

Tom wrote: []

Chenin indeed, demi-or-less-sec. A Jasnieres would do well, I think, or maybe a Montlouis. I'd stay away from the really highly pedigreed, I think you could find a good but not extraordinary match.

Bleu d'Auvergne ranges from the insipid to the wonderful, usually very creamy cows milk cheese.

-E

Thanks for the tips! Off to see what I can find and then to see how it works.

Hi Tom,

I have never heard of making a terrine with pork, chicken liver and blue cheese.

If the ingredients are listed in decreasing amounts as is normal, then I guess that the eggs will be there to make a "set" and the milk to give some softness and maybe to soften the flavours as well. I can't see either being present in sufficiently large quantities to affect the flavour much or it's match with wine. I have to say I'm having real difficulty "mindtasting" this terrine.

I haven't a clue what I'd serve with such a beast. I make some cheese pastes, but they don't have pork or chicken liver. I make a pork terrine but that doesn't have cheese and I make a chicken liver terrine and that has neither of the above. As to what component made the wines taste odd, I have a suspicion it might be the chicken liver. I remember once doing a dinner where I served a chicken liver pate with Berkasteler Doktor kabinett 73 - this was a very long time ago when I was very much in the early stages of learning about food and wine matches. The paté completely destroyed the wine, to the extent that we all agreed to drink water with the pate and then take a break before moving on the next course, during which we'd drink the wine.

Bleu d'auvergne isn't a disaster with most reds - we serve a closely related wine, Bleu des Causses, at most of our dinners and very often people like to finish their reds with it, despite my best endeavour to discourage them! It's not the match of the century - far from it, but it's not M.A.D. either.

As you said, you could think about serving a genuinely sweet wine. Not necessarily as far gone as a Sauternes, but the sort of wine sold in France as "Vin moelleux" The second one on this page, for example.

-- All the best Fatty from Forges

Hi Ian Maybe this tells you something:

As to the Bernkasteler Doktor Kabinett 1973 I believe that the vintage was less than spectacular..., anyway the Doktor is wildly overrated... :-) Anders

"IanH" skrev i melding news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Not too much because what I can't do is to get my head around the marriage between the three major components. I know Bleu d'Auvergne very well, as we only live about 25km from the Corrèze Cantal bordr, so there's a lot of overlap between the two departments and regions and it'sone of the blue cheeses on offer in 99% of the local restaurants.

I'm tempted to say "so what?" I bought about 65 bottles on offer at

The point of my post was not the intrinsic quality of the good Doktor or the vintage about which I agree with you entirely. The point was that this was a wine I knew pretty well, which was destroyed by a chicken liver pâté. As to whether the presence of that ingredient in a dish flavoured with Bleu d'Auvergne would have been responsible for the effect on the wines with which it was tasted I don't know, it is relevant only in that I WAS able to put my finger on something that was to me at the time an enltirely unexpected mismatch.

May i remind you that I said:-

be the chicken liver.

THAT was the point of the post. No one else - in a week - had fingered the chicken liver.

-- All the best Fatty from Forges

"IanH" skrev i melding news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Ah, there it is - you knew the wine well! Then I rest my case :-)

And with respect to the terrine, the ingredients were listed on that web page; Maigre et gras de porc - Foie de porc - Bleu d'Auvergne - Lait - Oeufs - Farine de blé - Sel - Poivre

What wine to choose for that is beyond me, of course. I'm playing with the notions of a Barbera d'Asti or an Alsace Gewürztraminer VT... Hmm, silly me?

Best, Anders

Thanks, everyone, for all the great comments/discussions.

I took my time getting back to this and getting hold of another almost identical terrine seems somewhat impractical.

My wife and I did, however, pick up a "Blu di Mucca" (from Piedmont) at the Slow Food London Easter Market. This Italian cheese is like Gorgonzola, but no channels are made in the cheese via needling (also apparently done for Bleu d'Auvergne). We paired this with the Vouvray described below and it worked very well. That characteristic taste of a blu/bleu/blue cheese is at first washed away with this semi-sweet, acidic wine (replaced by the wine's elegant fruit, which we found hard to describe). After the wine taste fades, the cheese taste comes back in, slightly (but pleasantly) altered. Really enjoyable.

We tried the Vouvray with some nice wild boar salami and that worked, too.

This was a good education for our palates as we usually steer far and wide from any sort of semi-sweet or sweet wines combined with savory foods. No more. We may be hooked!