Three Inspired Sparkling Wine and Cheese Pairings

Holiday party season is just around the corner, so what better time to think about festive sparkling wine and food pairings? Here are three inspired ideas to get your (cheese) wheels turning. 

• Tête de Moine and J Vintage Brut. A great conversation starter, Tête de Moine or "Monk's Head" is a semi-hard Swiss cheese with a deliciously nutty aroma and a highly unusual presentation. To fully develop Tête de Moine's flavors, your cheese monger carefully pares it with a special shaving device called a Girolle. The result is a thin, delicate rosette of cheese with curled edges — a bit like an oyster mushroom. In this form, Tête de Moine has a deliciously silky body that melts in your mouth. The name of this cheese from the Swiss monks of Bellelay who began making it in the year 1292. Tête de Moine is fantastic with a dry sparkling wine like our J Vintage Brut, which has bright pear and citrus characters.
  


• Gougère and J Brut Rosé. Gougère are puffy little balls of savory cheese pastry —  delicious served right out of the oven with a chilled glass of our J Brut Rosé. We especially love these Laura Chenel Chevre Gougere because the slight tang of the gougère's goat cheese tastes so delicious with the Brut Rosé's vibrant fruit flavors and crisp bubbles. This is such a fun pairing and guests absolutely love it. Gougère are surprisingly easy to make, too. The dough freezes well, so just make some ahead, take out of the freezer in the morning, then pop a batch in the oven a half hour before guests start to arrive. Gruyere, Comté, and Emmentaler cheeses are great in gougère as well.
  
  
• Cheese and Charcuterie Platter with J Cuvée. One of the most festive food trends right now is the cheese and charcuterie platter, a great way to engage guests and show off local producers. The easiest way to pull a platter together is to include a diverse array of selections: one fresh cheese like a Burrata, a soft cheese like Brie, a semi-soft cheese like Friulano, a hard cheese like Parmigiano Reggiano, and a veined cheese like a Gorgonzola. Cured meats like salami and cooked items like pancetta will round out your platter. Treat the cheeseboard like a centerpiece and flank it with a few buckets of chilled J Cuvée. With aromas of crushed hazelnut and flavors of lemon zest, Fuji apples, and Bartlett pears, the Cuvée is a versatile sparkling wine that will pair beautifully with all your platter selections.

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Here’s our new J Brut Rosé in a clear bottle with a sexy black J! Look for it at J Vineyards & Winery or your favorite retailer or restaurant this holiday season!

The new J Brut Rosé video shows the bottles going through the inspection light to ensure all the bottles are in perfect condition.  Prior to the inspection light, the bottles were disgorged.  Following the inspection the bottles will have the foils added to the top and neck of the bottle and allowed to rest for another 3-6 months before release.

 

Do you know how sparkling wine is made?  Here is a brief overview of J sparkling wine production from the vineyard to the bottle:

Harvest & Vineyards

All grapes for our J sparkling wines are hand-harvested into small quarter ton bins and placed as whole clusters, without destemming, into our special Coquard press for a gentle pressing cycle.  The grapes for our J sparkling wines were selected from J’s Estate Vineyards in the Russian River Valley. Our vineyards yield a balanced crop of clean, flavorful grapes that exhibit bright, lush aromas. 

Press

 What makes the Coquard so special? No need to rotate the press as it operates like a basket, less production of solids and phenolic extraction, less processing on the front end, producing higher quality juice.

Ferment

All vineyard lots are kept separate as are cuvée and taille fractions.  Cuvée is the “free-run” juice, highest quality, most flavors, acid, and best balance.  Taille is the “press” juice, good structure but requires higher psi for yield.   All juice is fermented at cool temperatures (~ 60oF) to preserve fruit and aromatics.

Assemblage (blending)

Each lot is evaluated and the cuvées are blended to the highest standards.

Filter + Sugar + Yeast

Once the blends are made the wine is filtered, and a small amount of sugar is added for the secondary fermentation. After secondary fermentation in the bottle, the wine ages for an average of 36 months in our cool cellars. The day of bottling, yeast is added and the bottles are secured with a bidule, a small plastic cup that fits in the bottle's neck and into which the sediment eventually settles.  A crown cap secures the closure.

Tirage

The bottled wine is stored in a cool warehouse, on its side, where the second fermentation completes in about six weeks.  By conducting the second fermentation in a sealed vessel, this captures the CO2 which is a normal by-product of fermentation (YEAST + SUGAR = CO2 + EtOH), giving sparkling wine its bubbles!  The rest of the time on tirage is spent aging - allowing the yeast to breakdown and adds complexity to the wine that enhance bouquet, flavors, and mouthfeel. Longer tirage time also means smaller bubbles.

Riddle

The bottles are transferred to our riddling racks where they go through a series of twists and turns to collect all the yeast cells and sediment into the neck of the bottle.

Disgorge

After riddling, the bottles “rest” for a period of 1-3 months neck down in a cold room. This allows the yeast cells to compact, and by keeping the wine cool it’s easier to disgorge. The neck of the bottle is frozen, freezing the yeast so when the crown cap is removed, the frozen yeast is blown out by the pressure from the second fermentation, clarifying the wine of any sediment. A small amount of dosage (reserve wine + sugar) is added back to the wine for balance.The bottle is then corked with a wire cap, foiled, and allowed to rest for another 3-6 months before release.

Enjoy J!

J Vineyards & Winery

11447 Old Redwood Highway

Healdsburg, CA 95448

707.431.5400 - Main

707.431.3646 - Vistor Center