What Wine would you Serve with a Cauliflower and Blue Cheese Soup
The Cauliflower and Blue Cheese soup is so terribly simple to prepare. Just poach the cauliflower florets in good packet liquid chicken stock until soft. Blend the florets, with additions of the poaching stock until smooth, not too liquid, not too dense, and then add in the crumbled local blue cheese, a little at a time, tasting after each addition until you are happy with the combination. Then adjust and season to your taste. You may need salt, pepper, lemon juice, caster sugar - even, if you like, a little curry powder! Simmer on a heat pad or very low heat. Fry in good olive oil some diced bread croutons, about 15mms square. Once the hot soup is in the bowl, sprinkle the croutons onto the surface and some chopped chives, and there you have it! A tasty, ultra simple Winter Soup.
But what wine would you choose to complement this fare? The classic choice would be an Amontillado or a Dry Oloroso Sherry, (BTW, under the new agreements with the EU, Australian wines of this style must now be referred to as Apera instead of Sherry.) My first thoughts went to a rich, ripe, warm region, wooded ML Chardonnay, to kind of emulate the flavour, weight and texture of the soup. I didn’t have any recent examples of that Style of wine in the cellar and the older ones I do have are ready for the sump. Usually, they don’t age so well. There is still a place for that style of wine on the dining table, particularly in Winter. But fashion dictates that wooded Chardonnays these days typically come from cooler climes, are picked less ripe, with higher acidity, less exposure to wood, creating a less opulent, finer style.
Next thought was a spicy, lighter white wine with some residual sugar to increase its palate weight, off dry to medium sweet, say 18-25 g/l. But how do you find such a wine. Label terminology is so vague. Late Picked can mean anything. There is no objective definition. Interestingly, “Wine Australia” Board Member, Josephine Rozman, pointed out that the International Riesling Foundationhas devised a graphic scale to indicate the level of sweetness of the wine in the bottle: Dry, Medium Dry, Medium Sweet etc. It is not just based on residual sugar but takes into account other factors that can influence one’s perception of sweetness. What an excellent, consumer friendly idea, aimed fairly and squarely at helping consumers make informed dining - and purchasing - decisions. I found one such example. Jane Hunter’s Marlborough 2010 Gewürztraminer offers the IRF Graph Scale on its back label. The graph indicated the wine was in the higher level of Medium Dry. Not sweet enough in my opinion for our Soup’s complement but what an interesting wine, offered say as a cool apéritif!
Another thought: maybe a Rosé with some retained sweetness would be an interesting contrast with the Cauliflower and Blue Cheese Soup? Similar problem as with the “lighter white wine with some residual sugar to increase its palate weight.” Here is what former SIWC Judge Robin Garr (USA) had to say about Rosés. “Significantly, there's considerable diversity within the Rosé category. Rosé wines may vary from off-dry to bone-dry, totally sugar-free; from feather-light to full-bodied; from soft, low-level acidity to piercing steeliness; from simple fruit to complex swirls of fruit, herbs and minerals; and, not least, depending on how the wine maker has handled the "blanc de noirs" process of extracting light-coloured wine from dark-coloured grapes, Rosé wines may range from the palest pink through rose, salmon and copper to a rich claret colour that's all but indistinguishable from red wine.” [wine@wineloverspage.com]. (This is where the Award Winners link at www.top100wines.com can help. From the 2011 Comp, there are ten Award winners there with full independent descriptions by the six Judges who judged the Category, but no reference to Residual Sugar. This is something we shall rectify in the Competition’s 2012 website.)
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