Easy French Cheese Board and Wine: Use the Rule of 3's

Have you ever wanted to put together a charcuterie board?

Let’s keep it simple and follow what I call the rule of three when it comes to French cheese and wine. The rule of three is easy to replicate.

• You want to get three types of cheeses.
• You want to get a goat and maybe two cow’s milk cheeses.
• You want a soft, a semi-hard, and a hard cheese, a mild, medium, and strong cheese.
  • SOFT MEDIUM CHEESE: I would recommend a goat cheese like Chèvre from the Loire Valley. They’re easy to find, try cylindrical ones that can be easily found at the supermarket or cheesemonger.
  • MILD SEMI SOFT: I like brie but most of the brie cheeses in the United States are tasteless because they’re ultra-pasteurized and not quite ripe. Try St. Andre because it’s like full fat and it has great flavor and usually the taste is really good.

• So now we’ve got our cheeses we need some carbs to go with it.
  • Start with a beautiful baguette.
  • Then add two types of crackers: a plain cracker, and then a cracker that has something fun with some nuts and dried cranberries. 

Next, you want to have some accompaniments- things to enhance the flavor of the cheese.

• Add sweet like honey jam or apples; something salty like olives and something crunchy like almonds.
• Now you are ready to plate it together. Try adding some fig leaves or magnolia leaves.
• Stack the cheeses-cut the cheese in half and put it on top of the other to give it some texture and layers.
• Add some thyme and put it on the goat cheese just to give it a little bit of a pop of color.

We’ve got our cheeses: now the wines!

The easiest way to pair French wine with French cheese:

• Think about pairing the cheese from the region with the wine that’s from the region.
• So let’s go with the first one a Chèvre -normally it’s from the Loire Valley.
  • Try a Sauvignon Blanc from France from the Loire Valley. 
  • If you want a bubbly get a Cremant de Loire. It’s a sparkling wine, but it can’t be called Champagne because it’s not produced in Champagne. It’s Chenin Blanc from the Loire that’s really delicious. 

• Next is the high-fat St. Andre
  • St. Andre can go well with a red wine like a Gamay from Beaujolais like a Beaujolais cru. 
• The last one is cheddar.
  • Cheddar is a hard cheese with a stronger flavor and that would go great with a Bordeaux red. 
  • I would love that with something from the Entre Deux Mers, or even the Cru Bourgeois.

So let’s recap French wine and French cheese.

• If you want to do a cheese board keep it simple-keep it to the rule of threes.
• A soft, semi-soft and hard cheese with three different flavor profiles- mild medium and strong.
• You want to accompany it with three different types of breads so maybe a baguette and two different types of crackers: a simple cracker, and crackers that have some fruits and nuts rolled into them.
• And then as accompaniments, you want something sweet, something savory, and something crunchy. So add some jam, some apple slices, and some honey. Something savory could be olives and something crunchy could be almonds.  

As far as the wines are concerned pair the wine from the region where it came from.

• Try a Sancerre or Pouilly Fume, which is just next to Sancerre, or a Cremant de Loire for the Loire cheese.
• For Saint Andre you can go with a Gamay from Beaujolais or a regional Burgundy.
• And then last but not least is your sharp cheddar try a Bordeaux from Entre Deux Meres or Graves.
• If you only want to serve one thing you could try rose from Champagne, that would be delicious.

Keep things simple with intentionality and enjoy!