“Matching whisky with anything, if you try hard enough, will work,” says Lachlan Watt, bar manager at Melbourne’s Whisky and Alement. It’s a comforting thought, coming from the man recently crowned the world’s best bar manager at the Icons of Whisky Awards. At Whisky and Alement, Watt matches whisky with everything from sour beers to house-brined cheese, and says that it’s not always about being “correct”. “I think it’s about making the experience better,” says Watt. “You might create a different experience but at least people are trying something new or enjoying it in a different way, and I think that’s the most important thing about these pairings.”
Picking a whisky
Smoky, fruity, bready, spicy, earthy – whisky is almost endlessly varied in flavour and style. Before you fill your cheese board, it’s worth understanding your dram. “Start with the whisky and then go, ‘So what are the identifying flavours?’” says Watt. “When I do my pairings – because I do all the pairings for our boilermakers – I always talk about layers of flavour.”
The first layer is the initial flavour of the whisky – with Glenfiddich, this is typically apples and pears, for example – while the second layer emerges as the whisky sits in the glass. Watt recommends grabbing a few of these flavour notes before laying out your cheese board. “You can latch onto those really easily and highlight them and make it a whole unique experience,” says Watt.
Choosing your cheese
Like with the whisky, you might need to do some taste-testing before settling on a match. At one end of the flavour spectrum you’ll find hard cheeses. “It’s such a broad category, these hard cheeses,” says Watt. “You can get really crystalline, old comtes and goudas that need a bit of sweetness to them. That’s why we’re always adding honey and apricot and quince paste to our cheese boards.” Cheeses on the sharper side tend to suit rich, sweeter whisky styles and Watt suggests something like a cask-aged Balvenie to provide that counterbalance. One pairing that works well is an aged cheddar with Glenfiddich 15.
On the softer side, gooey cheeses like brie and camembert need a more delicate approach. “Soft cheeses tend to pair with lighter, brighter fruit characteristics,” says Watt. “That’s why we add apple to cheese boards.” For these soft styles, opt for a fruit-forward whisky that cuts through the creaminess without drowning out some of the more delicate flavours of the cheese.
The rest of the board
Like the whisky, the other elements of a cheese board need to work with the cheese – and fruit is a great place to start. As Watt says, softer cheeses tend to pair well with the crunch and acidity of something like green apple, while dried apricots or quince paste are great for reining in a hard cheese, and figs work with funky blue cheeses.
For the rest of the board, Watt doesn’t believe that the cracker or bread makes much of an impact (“I’ve never found a cracker that doesn’t work for pairing with whisky,” he says) but that you should probably skip the olives. “I’ve rarely found olives that pair well with whisky,” he says. “I love olives as much as anyone but you’d rarely see olives in our bar.” Instead, nuts can be a good board-filler. “Seasoned almonds with a bit of crunch work beautifully with those harder cheeses as well because it emulates some of those flavours,” says Watt.
Including the whisky in this flavour triangle doesn’t need to be tough, you just need to apply the same principles as you would to apple and whisky to cheese and whisky. “These all work beautifully with whiskies in different ways – it’s why we have a Glenfiddich and fresh green apple juice on our menu, it’s a perfect pairing,” says Watt. “These are all great pairings to make something a bit more holistic – a complete experience.”
This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with Glenfiddich.
