Cheese with Moscato d'Asti

 

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Moscato d'Asti makes for a sweet, crowd-pleasing wine, and it takes well to any of the world's great rinded blues.

Try French Fourme d'Ambert, English Stilton (or better, the raw milk Stichelton), or Jasper Hill Farm's Bayley Hazen Blue (recently awarded the "Best Raw Milk Cheese in the World" honor), or a mellower foil-wrapped choice like Point Reyes Bay Blue. (The more peppery blues like Spanish Cabrales mow the wine over.)

That wine is the frilly, peachy Moscato d'Asti which, alongside fudgey blues with earthen edge, plays the role that dripping autumn pears might otherwise hold. That it's semisweet is helpful too, that succulent sugar offsetting blue's elevated salinity.