Could Mead be the Perfect Pairing for Blue Cheese?
Because there is no single style of blue cheese, there is no one perfect pairing. But a wide variety of flavor profiles allows for a wide variety of beverages including wine, spirits, beer, and mead. Blue cheese is blue thanks spores from mold and more specifically, a type of penicillin mold called Penicillium roquerforti. Blue cheeses can be made with any kind of milk and is made in many different countries. As contributor and cheesemonger David Phillips points out, “each have dramatically different flavors, textures and aromas.” Some blues are creamy while others are dry and crumbly. Some blues have fruity sweet notes, some are milky and unctuous, others are bright and tangy or even meaty or spicy.
Classic Blue Cheese Pairings
Honey is a classic pairing with blue cheese for good reason. The sweetness of honey complements bolder strong and tangy and spicy flavors often present in the cheese. When it comes to beverages, things get a bit trickier. While fruity red wines can pair well with milder blue cheese, heartier reds can work with blue cheese on steak or a burger. Sauternes and Port are also classic pairings with blue cheese, especially Stilton. These sweet wines function much the same way honey does. Cheese expert and author Laura Werlin explains how to pair blue cheese and sweet wines this way, “My basic philosophy about sweet wine and blue cheese pairing: The wine should only be as sweet as the cheese is salty. This means that if you have a very salty blue cheese, you can afford to veer into the very-sweet wine category. But if the cheese is only mildly salty, don’t go with a super sweet wine,” adding “Instead choose one with tamped down sweetness, such as mead.”
What is Mead?
Mead is often referred to as “honey wine” but technically it is not wine. It is a fermented beverage made with honey, yeast and water but can also include fruit, coffee, herbs, spices or even hops. Meads can range in alcohol between 6% and 20%. They can also be dry or sweet. There are many types of meads including carbonated meads and barrel aged meads, but the two most common styles are hydromel meads which contain less honey and are lighter in alcohol and more similar to session beers, and sack meads, which are higher in both honey and alcohol, they are more similar to dessert wines.
Pairing Mead and Blue Cheese
Because of the variety of flavors in mead and blue cheese, it’s quite possible to find a beautiful pairing. According to Phillips, since blues are often served with a drizzle of honey, pairing them with a honey-based beverage seems natural. He adds, “Most blues are spicy, acidic and often more salty than say, a gouda or a bloomy rind. For this reason, sweet beverages like dessert wines and barrel-aged stouts offer a nice contrast. Mead would work in much the same way, particularly those with a lot of residual sweetness. I'm thinking Stilton with a sweet mead. A drier mead might go nicely with a peppery, bright blue like Maytag or Point Reyes Original Blue.”
Michael Zilber of Heidrun Meadery believes you can easily find the perfect mead pairing to match any style of blue. He adds, “Here at Heidrun, we specialize in creating dry, sparkling, varietal meads focusing on the natural flavors and aromas of the nectar from which the honey is produced. And we say that there is a world of flowers, a world of nectar, and therefore just a world of flavors that we are able to achieve just by focusing on these monofloral honeys. So even within our one particular dry style we produce, we can find a great range of pairings.”
Heidrun Hawaiian Macadamia Nut mead with Point Reyes Bay Blue
When it comes to specific pairings, Zilber has a few recommendations. “Our California Orange Blossom is bone dry, but it’s perfume and slight grape note works well with bright, high-acid blues like Point Reyes Original Blue, Maytag or Buttermilk Blue. Whereas our Hawaiian Macadamia Nut has a rich, slightly earthy tropical, and slightly nutty note that reminds us of vintage champagne that works nicely with nutty, rich blues like the Bay Blue and Colston Bassett Stilton. Our Oregon Chicory Blossom has an herbaceous and botanical, gin-like quality that pairs with the smokiness of the Rogue Smokey Blue. And then our California Raspberry Blossom, which is actually savory, not fruity (Again, we don’t add fruit to it. it is an expression of the raspberry blossom nectar.), and has a green olive note that works well with the sweet, beefy fermented quality of the Sequatchie Cove Shakerag and Rogue River Blue.”
Maytag Mead
Don Boelens, CEO Maytag at Foundry Distillery
Maytag Dairy Farms has been making award-winning artisan blue cheese in their Newton, Iowa, production facility since 1941. In celebration of their 80th anniversary, Maytag collaborated with a custom distillery, Foundry Distilling Co. also located in Iowa, to create Maytag Mead Honey Wine, a barrel-aged mead made with honey from Maytag’s honeybees.
Maytag delivered their honey to Foundry Distilling Co., where it was heated in a pot still at 75℉ for twenty days with yeast, and when fully fermented, bottled at 12% alcohol (ABV). Foundry then aged the mead in used charred oak bourbon barrels and finally bottled and sealed the bottles using wax produced by Maytag estate bees. The mead has subtle caramel and vanilla flavors and a floral aroma. It’s the first such collaboration we’ve heard about, but probably not the last.
Maytag blue is made with raw milk and is cave-aged for 6 months. It’s dense and crumbly with a creamy texture and a tangy almost lemon finish. And the pairing with Maytag’s mead? It might just “bee” a perfect match.