Pairing with Tea

A delegation from FUCheese convened two weekends ago in Central Point, Oregon, for the Oregon Cheese Guild’s Fourth Annual Oregon Cheese Festival hosted by Rogue Creamery. They had a handful of workshops and we were drawn to the tea and cheese pairing. The tea was provided by Steven Smith who has developed an eponymous line of teas and who hails from Stash and Tazo tea fame. He knows his stuff. He and David Gremmels of Rogue Creamery developed the tasting and David walked us through the cheeses explaining how he analyzes cheese and why the pairs work together.

Steven Smith pours samples

To talk about the tea for a moment all on its own. The tea is gorgeous. With each sample, a sachet was passed around and the tea leaves are simply beautiful (see top photo). The packaging is refined but graphic and alluring. The aroma of these teas was just wonderful and the colors were great, too. With each tea, he talked about his process in creating the blend, his travels to find the best ingredients and explained how the ingredients work together to make the resultant flavor. While I make tea at home (usually Stash or Tazo), I really know nothing about it so this was a great education!

Cheese plate

The tasting was set up generally with lighter teas/cheeses at the beginning, getting more flavorful as you go ’round the plate. At the 12 o’clock position is Pondhopper from Tumalo Farms, a washed rind goat cheese from Bend, Oregon. It was paired with Meadow which, frankly, smelled like its name — it had a very toasty, “wheaty” scent like you could imagine blowing across a newly-flowering meadow in the sunshine. Seriously!

The French Prairie Brie from Willamette Valley Cheese was next, paired with Red Nector made with African Honey Bush. Steven called this “the taste of walking in a peach orchard.” David described this cheese as a cheese with a “sweet center” with grass tones and brown butter and just a hint of sharpness. He chose it because he felt that the flavors of the cheese toned down the peatiness of the tea and helped to “elongate” the flavor. This was a pretty great pair, actually, and I felt like these two did have an interplay that was a lot of fun.

David Gremmels talks cheese

The third pair was pretty interesting, it paired one of my current favorites, Sunset Bay from River’s Edge Chevre, with Fez which includes Oregon spearmint. The tea had a light mint aroma on the nose and an even lighter, subtle mint on the tongue. It was a nice contrast pair with the Sunset Bay which is a gorgeous cheese – a bloomy rind with a coating of vegetable ash and a dividing line in the middle of spicy paprika. That paprika, though, is so bright that I think it actually overpowered the tea a little bit.

And here’s where the pairing turned to darker teas and more robustly flavored cheeses. With the Tillamook sharp cheddar we sampled Brahmin’s Choice, a black tea, a bit smoky, which turned out to be quite the hearty pair. Smith’s Lord Bergamont, a “fresh twist on traditional Earl Grey” was matched with Hillis Peak from Pholia Farms, another cheese with a bit of spice — paprika rubbed into the rind. Both were excellent, though by this time my stomach was getting a little fatigued with the darker teas. Finally, we finished with a ruby colored herbal tea, Hibiscus, which was paired with Rogue Creamery’s famous Caveman Blue which you can see in the photo at top.

The Hibiscus is apparently made with a touch of sarsaparilla which, Steven explained, helps to give it a full flavor profile with a “top, center and bottom.” Sarsaparilla apparently gives this tea its center. The Caveman Blue is peppery and strong with grass notes and, as David pointed out, “cereal.” I wanted this to work better together. They were both delicious but I prefer a much more dominate pair with a blue cheese than the tea was able to deliver.

One aspect that I thought was really surprising was how the temperature of the tea affected the flavor of the cheese. Just having a warm tongue really changed the consistency and aromas I got from the cheese. A few of these cheeses, I have eaten many times so this was kind of fun way to experience them differently. I also really enjoyed listening to Steven describe the scents and flavors in his tea. Each artisinal food/drink tends to develop its own language — caramel, grass, honey, peach, etc. Thinking about what the flavors were and how they complemented or contrasted was a really interesting experience and gave my brain as well as my mouth a workout.

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Be sure to check out Steven Smith’s tea shop online which lists where you can find the tea and has a really fascinating page on his ingredients. If you live in Portland or are planning to visit, check out his shop and tasting room located at 1626 NW Thurman Street, open M-F 9-5:30.