WINE PAIRING: Shilling X Touraine Sauvignon

Our resident wine expert, Katherine Dart from Grape & Nectar, takes us through her pairing suggestions for June’s hero cheese - Shilling by White Lake Cheese.

I decided to go with a classic pairing and selected a Sauvignon Blanc to go with the Shilling – goat’s cheese and Sauvignon Blanc are a match made in heaven.

This Touraine Sauvignon is one of the best examples I’ve come across in a long time. The citrus notes support the fresh, youthful character of the cheese. The more herbal, blackcurrant leaf characters and fresh minerality work in harmony with the grassy notes of the Shilling and the freshness they both exhibit enables them to work seamlessly together.

The wine is made by Luc Poullain who bought a small domaine in the Loire when he was 30 years old. Prior to that he’d studied as an agricultural engineer in Bedfordshire in the early 1990s (it is no surprise that he speaks exemplary English), before returning to France.

Luc’s Sauvignon Blanc is sourced from vineyards on the slopes and plateaux on the south bank of the river Cher, where soil types match those of his more illustrious Sauvignon Blanc neighbours further to the east. The result is a wine with forward fruitiness, deceptive concentration and vibrant acidity.

If you want to try a non-alcoholic option, I found the elderflower cordial from Handmade in Chiltern to work beautifully. I simply diluted the cordial with sparkling water and it made the most perfect and refreshing non-alcoholic accompaniment to the cheese. Handmade in Chiltern only use the most fragrant and freshly opened elderflower blossoms for their handmade cordial. All the elderflower is harvested in season, in the Chilterns ensuring a truly local, small batch production of the highest quality.