Recommendations

Aged goat's cheese and stewed apricots with Osborne Pedro Ximenez

On the board lies aged Dutch goat's cheese, dry and crystalline, with a bowl of dried apricots that have stood for twenty minutes in sweet wine and cinnamon. The Pedro Ximenez sets against it a deep chocolate-brown wine from that same dried-fruit register.

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From the shelf

The bottle

Osborne has its bodegas in El Puerto de Santa Maria and keeps some of the oldest sweet soleras in the region there. This bottle is a Pedro Ximénez: the grapes are first laid out in the sun, the soleo, after which the must is pressed and fermentation is stopped with wine spirit. The wine then matures for an average of five to six years in American oak in the solera y criadera system. It is deep chocolate brown and very sweet, with notes of raisin, molasses and plum, and comes in 75 centilitres. We do not state the alcohol percentage here, because the figures differ; the Consejo Regulador gives 15 to 22 percent for this style and more than 212 grams of residual sugar per litre.

Osborne Pedro Ximenez

The combination

Why this works together

An old goat's cheese is a different cheese from a young one: the Dutch product dossier describes how the taste moves from soft, mild and pure to more intense as the cheese matures and dries out further, and the salt content can rise to well over four percent of the dry matter. What then lies on the board is salty, dry and sharp, with the typical goat note that many wines cannot handle. A Pedro Ximenez tackles that from two sides. The sweetness, more than 212 grams per litre, settles over the salt and the sharpness; in taste research sweetness considerably lowers the threshold for perceiving salt, so that the two do not cancel each other out but stay legible side by side. And the stewed apricots form the bridge: they bring the same dried fruit to the plate that the wine has in the glass, with cinnamon as the link to the molasses and prune note from the solera.

At the table

The dish

  • For 4 people
  • Ready in 35 minutes, plus cooling
  • Type cheese course

What you need

  • 400 g mature Dutch goat cheese
  • 250 g dried apricots
  • 100 ml sweet wine
  • 150 ml water
  • 40 g soft brown sugar
  • 1 cinnamon stick
  • toasted bread or dry crackers

How to make it

  1. Put the dried apricots with the water, the sweet wine, the soft brown sugar and the cinnamon stick in a saucepan.
  2. Bring the whole slowly to the boil and then turn the heat down low.
  3. Let the apricots stew gently for about twenty minutes, until they are soft and the liquid has become syrupy.
  4. Remove the cinnamon stick and let the apricots cool to room temperature in their syrup.
  5. Take the goat's cheese out of the fridge an hour before serving and cut it into thin wedges or slices.
  6. Spoon the apricots with some of the syrup into a small bowl and put it next to the cheese, with bread or crackers alongside.

In the glass

Serving

Serve this Pedro Ximenez at 12 to 14 degrees, the temperature the Consejo Regulador keeps for this style, in a catavinos or a white wine glass. Keep the portion small; alongside a cheese course a quarter to a third of a glass is enough. An opened bottle stays good for a long time: the Consejo counts on about two months for oxidatively aged sherry with the bottle closed and stored cool, and the high sugar content makes this style in practice even more patient.

All about Osborne Pedro XimenezBack to Recommendations from ’t Bockje

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