Summer Cocktail & Cheese Pairings | The Cheese Professor

It’s hot out there—and there’s no better way to cool off in the summer than with a crisp, refreshing cocktail. Although the pairing of mixed drinks and craft spirits with artisan cheese isn’t quite as commonplace as, say, wine or beer, a great wedge and a quality cocktail can play well together.

But what’s the best way to pair cheese and cocktails during sweltering weather? To find out, we sought the advice of an expert in both: Tenaya Darlington, better known as Madame Fromage and contributor to this site.

The longtime cheese blogger and author of the forthcoming book The Milky Way: A Cheese Lover's Guide to the Galaxy also happens to know quite a bit about cocktails. Together with her brother Andre Darlington, she’s written three stellar cocktail cookbooks, The New Cocktail Hour, TCM’s Movie Night Menus, and Booze & Vinyl. And on her Instagram account, she’s often pairing new concoctions from her extensive home bar with some of the country’s best artisan cheeses.

Here are her tips for chilling out with craft cocktails and great cheeses all summer long.

Tip #1: Summer cheeses need special care.

Your first instinct on a steamy day might not be to reach for a ripe, oozy wheel of cheese. But to Darlington, this convenient, no-cook food is in fact ideal for hot weather. “Cheese is great in summer because it’s cool, it involves no cooking, and you can execute a beautiful board quickly for yourself or for others,” she says.

For a poolside snack or outdoor picnic, though, there are things you can do to keep your cheeses looking and tasting their best. Rather than serving cheeses on a wooden or plastic board, go for a piece of marble or slate, which will stay cooler in high temperatures. Take care not to leave that board with the hot sun beating down on it—a shady spot on your picnic blanket is ideal.

When prepping for your summertime cheese board, it’s ideal to keep a length of cheesecloth on hand. For one, you can use it to cover your board if the pungent aroma attracts insects. It also comes in handy for gently dabbing firm cheeses if they get a little sweaty—the technical term for what happens when beads of butterfat appear on the cut surface of firm cheeses at warmer temperatures.

Finally, pair those warm, relaxed cheeses with a well-chilled cocktail. “When you’re drinking a cold cocktail and the cheese board starts to get a little melty, you care less because your palate is staying cool,” Darlington says.

Cocktails gin.jpeg — Photo credit: Tenaya Darlington

Tip #2: Gin is a natural pairing with cheese.

Thanks to their herbaceous notes and frequent additions of citrus, gin drinks are a natural pairing with cheeses, which often carry notes of fresh pastures and aromatic wildflowers in their flavor profiles. One of Darlington’s go-to summer sips is a bright, effervescent French 75 served with fresh chevre. This pairing is also a go-to for soft-ripened, wrinkly-rinded goat cheese like Vermont Creamery’s Coupole or Merry Goat Round, a Brie-style goat’s milk wheel from Firefly Farms in Maryland.

“With gin, you get that herbaceous undernote that’s great with cheese, lemon for brightness, and then a splash of bubbly—technically Cremant, but you can use cava or prosecco,” she says. The lemon brings out the tartness of the goat’s milk, while the bubbles from the sparkling wine sweep the palate clean between bites.

Tip #3: Reach for the rum when pairing sweeter, richer cheeses.

A squeeze of lime, lemon, or orange can lighten up a pairing with bigger flavors like deep, dark rum. Along with spicy, effervescent ginger beer, the lime juice in a Dark and Stormy evens out the richness of the rum when paired with a heavier cheese like aged gouda. Beemster XO or L’Amuse, with their notes of toffee and brown sugar, make a natural fit for the caramelized richness of rum.

“A Dark and Stormy is a great way of bringing out those notes in the cheese, and it’s incredibly refreshing,” Darlington says. Pull together a trio of different goudas of different ages and serve them with accent bites like candied ginger, candied pecans, hot honey, macadamia nuts and tropical dried fruits pineapple and mango.

“They don’t often show up on a cheese board, but a gouda can handle it, and a Dark and Stormy pulls it all together,” she says. Darlington also been enjoying variations on the drink—adding orange or a muddle of mint instead of the typical squeeze of lime—with Sark, an especially rich, dense, triple-cream butterkäse made by the Hoard’s Dairyman Creamery in Wisconsin.

Thanks to the barrel aging process, Darlington finds that dark rum’s flavor profile of forest, earth, and caramel goes exceptionally well with cheese. The spirit with just a squeeze of orange or lemon over ice makes a natural foil for a smooth, nutty wheel like P’tit Basque.

Cocktails VieuxCarre.jpeg — Photo credit: Tenaya Darlington

Tip #4: Use herbs to link drinks and wedges.

While a citrusy profile can be the nexus for a great cheese and cocktail pairing, Darlington also likes to build her pairings around subtler yet still refreshing flavors of fresh herbs. That flavor shows up in another summer go-to sip, the Bijou—a blend of gin, Chartreuse, sweet vermouth, and bitters. “It’s got this big kick of herbs that works with all kinds of cheeses,” she says.

Match this heavy-hitting cocktail with aged cow and sheep’s milk cheeses—think Pittsburgh-based Goat Rodeo Cheese’s Wild Rosemary, a cow-goat mixed-milk wheel rubbed with olive oil and coated with rosemary, or a rosemary-crusted Manchego. “That cheese is a wonderful bridge into the world of herbaceous cocktails like the Bijou,” Darlington says. Chartreuse’s cooling, minty flavor profile also pairs surprisingly well with sweeter, milder blue cheeses.

And if you happen to be a lover of absinthe, as she is, Darlington loves to sip on the herb-infused spirit—on the rocks, with a little water—as she nibbles on aged goat cheese, like Tomme de Linden Dale from Linden Dale Farms in Pennsylvania.

Tip #5: When in doubt, keep it simple.

But what if you’re pulling together a few friends for a backyard hangout, and you’ve got a plethora of cheeses—different kinds of milk, textures, ages, and flavor profiles—to snack on? Darlington relies on a classic, two-ingredient cocktail to pair well with just about any wedge in tropical temperatures.

“A gin and tonic always has a place with a cheese plate in the summer,” she says. With the herbaceousness of the gin and the bitter of the tonic, it’s just a great accent for a cheese board.” All you have to do is open two bottles, pour, and toast to your flavorful yet refreshing summertime cheese board.