French told to eat cheese with whisky

Wine and cheese might be a match made in heaven, but one expert is recommending that the French eat their national dish with whisky instead.

Lancashire cheese

Xavier Thuret, who won the Meilleur Ouvrier de France award for his cheese, is advocating that the French not only turn to whisky when tucking into a camembert, but that it is served before, instead of after, a meal.

Mr Thurret told The Times that its is before a meal that cheese can be “fully appreciated”.

Such is the will to explore new cheese pairings in France that Paris Match recently devoted four pages to detailing its preferred whisky and cheese pairings. It recommended a 12-year-old Glenfiddich with Burgundy goat’s cheese; a limited edition 1984 whisky from Jura with Salers cheese from central France, a Taiwanese Kavalan whisky with Roquefort and Jack Daniel’s with Swiss Appenzeller cheese.

Even La Maison du Whisky, the Parisian whisky store, is supporting the match writing on its website: “We tend to associate cheese and wine, but it has been shown that whisky can incite itself to the dinner table at the same time as a cheese board.”