Cheese Board for Wine Tasting

Making a cheese board for wine tasting? Follow this simple, down-to-earth guide to start pairing cheese, charcuterie and other snacks with wine!

I’ve come up with a lot of unique charcuterie board ideas (everything from jarcuterie to a Halloween charcuterie board to a Easter charcuterie board) for you guys. I know! I just love them so much. Styling them and photographing them, and eating them, of course.

But I’ll never make the same cheese board twice. I’m always looking for new and fun goodies to add to my boards, and new ways to pair the ingredients with beverages.

A cheese board for wine tasting!

Consider this cheese board for wine tasting to be a sister post to my cheese board for beer. So, how do you make a good cheese platter to pair with beverages?

Today, I’m going to walk you through how to make a super easy, 100% finger food snack board perfect for a wine tasting.

What cheese for a cheese board for wine tasting?

It might be an unconventional approach, but rather than struggling with cheese decision paralysis, I just did a flight of cheddar cheeses for this board. This is also a great idea for individual charcuterie cups!

Just as there are subtle differences between different varieties of wine, it’s the same for cheese.

Hard cheeses like cheddar are generally the easiest types to pair with wine, and cheddar works well with both white and red wines.

In particular, cheddar pairs very well with an oaky Chardonnay, as well as Syrah and Malbec.

So, this one platter can be a cheese board for red wine AND a cheese board for white wine!

Creating a Cheddar flight for a wine and cheese party:

For my cheese flight, I chose three cheddars from Black Creek Cheeses:

• Sharp Cheddar Cheese  – naturally aged for nine months to produce a distinctive flavor profile that’s rich and creamy with a pleasant sharpness.
• Extra Sharp Cheddar Cheese – naturally aged for two years, imparting a pleasantly sharp and complex flavor that is both rich and nutty.
• Cheddar Cheese with Parmesan Notes – smooth, creamy Cheddar cheese carefully blended with deliciously subtle notes of nutty Parmesan.

What else should I include on a cheese board for wine tasting?

Well, you’re in luck, because I took a wine class in culinary school, and I still have my GIANT textbook.

It gave me lots of great ideas for snack and wine pairings for my wine and cheese board, including:

• strawberries – pair with pinot noir (wine you might have left over from rigatoni meat sauce or fettuccine bolognese?)
• grapes or roasted grapes, because of course wine is made with grapes!
• chocolate chip cookies – pair with syrah or cabernet sauvignon (melomakarona cookies(Greek honey cookies) would also be great as a sweet treat here!)
• candied pecans or walnuts – pair with riesling
• pepperoni – pair with syrah
• sweet potato chips – pair with moscato
• white chocolate – pair with champagne
• prosciutto – pair with pinot noir
• castelvetrano olives – pair with sauvignon blanc

Tips for a successful cheese board for wine tasting:

• While I often enjoy adding honey, jam or some other type of spread to a good cheese platter, for a party with an active wine tasting, I like to keep my snack board to strictly finger foods, like phyllo cup appetizers. i.e. things you can pick up and pop into your mouth with one hand (so your wine glass can stay in the other hand!). No honey that needs spreading. No pistachios that need cracking.
• When I make a cheese platter for wine, I love a combination of both savory and sweet snacks. Some people have a sweet tooth while enjoying wine, and others have a savory tooth. See also – my New Year’s Eve finger foods board and Thanksgiving charcuterie board.
• Just like the combo of sweet and savory, I also like a balance of crunchy and soft. I like a variety of crackers for crunch factor, and then soft fruit like grapes and strawberries.
• If you’re not a wine lover or have a guest that doesn’t prefer it, offer them a cocktail or mocktail made with my rosemary syrup recipe. It will pair really well with everything on this board.
• This board is even great as part of a brunch buffet! I have a whole post of brunch ideas to round out the rest of your spread, as well. Don’t forget to try your hand at cooking bacon in the oven.

Disclosure: This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Saputo Cheese USA Inc. Sponsored posts help me pay for the costs associated with this blog (groceries…lots of groceries), and help support me as I pursue a career in recipe development and food photography. All opinions are 100% my own.