Recommendations
Roquefort and hazelnuts with González Byass Noe Pedro Ximenez
On the board lies a wedge of Roquefort at room temperature, with a handful of warm, freshly shelled hazelnuts beside it. The Pedro Ximenez sets an almost black wine against it, so sweet that it can carry the salt of the cheese.
From the shelf
The bottle
Noe is the Pedro Ximénez of González Byass in Jerez de la Frontera and carries the designation Muy Viejo: according to the house, the wine matures for more than thirty years in oak botas in the solera system. The grapes are one hundred percent Pedro Ximénez and after the harvest are laid out on mats in the sun to raisin, the asoleo that the Consejo Regulador describes for this style. Through that drying and decades of evaporation through the wood, the wine ends up at about 430 grams of residual sugar per litre, well above the 212 grams that the Consejo gives as the lower limit for the style. The bottle comes in 37.5 centilitres. We do not state the alcohol percentage here, because the figures differ; the Consejo uses 15 to 22 percent for this style.
The combination
Why this works together
Roquefort is salty, and that is not incidental but the heart of the cheese: the sheep's milk is veined with Penicillium and matured in the caves of the Combalou plateau, and what you get in your mouth is a concentrated salty sting with a sharp, almost metallic point. Almost no dry wine can stand up to that. A very sweet wine can, and the explanation is in the taste research: sweetness lowers the threshold at which salt is perceived by sixty percent, which in practice means that sweet and salty do not cancel each other out but give each other a place. With about 430 grams of residual sugar per litre, this wine has the weight for that. The hazelnuts do the second part of the work: their roasted protein tone runs level with the dark, toasted layer that the wine has kept from thirty years in cask, and their fat makes the syrupiness in the mouth lighter. The Consejo explicitly names intense blue cheeses such as Cabrales and Roquefort alongside Pedro Ximenez.
At the table
The dish
- For 4 people
- Ready in 25 minutes
- Type cheese course
What you need
- 250 g Roquefort
- 150 g whole hazelnuts, with skin
- toasted bread or crackers
- optionally a handful of raisins
How to make it
- Take the Roquefort out of the fridge an hour before serving, so that it comes to room temperature.
- Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.
- Spread the hazelnuts in a single layer on a baking tray and roast them for 10 to 15 minutes. Shake the tray halfway through.
- Take the nuts out of the oven as soon as they have darkened and wrap them straight away in a clean tea towel, so that they steam and the skins come loose.
- Rub the nuts in the cloth between your hands until the skins are off. If that does not work, put them back in the oven for a few more minutes.
- Let the nuts become lukewarm and place them with the cheese on a board, with the bread next to it and, if desired, a handful of raisins.
In the glass
Serving
Pour this Pedro Ximenez at 12 to 14 degrees into a catavinos or a white wine glass. Keep the portion small: with a cheese of this calibre a quarter to a third of a glass is enough, and the wine is so concentrated that more shuts down the palate. An opened bottle stays good for a long time; the Consejo counts on about three months for VOS and VORS wines and, for oxidatively aged sherry in general, on two, with the bottle closed and stored cool. Because of the high sugar content, this wine lasts even longer in practice.
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