The Best Wine & Cheese Pairings For Happy Hour
There are few things more classic, awesome, and primed for Great Times than cheese and wine. Whether you’re entertaining your Flock or enjoying your own personal happy hour - some of our best moments have been made over wine and cheese.
We’re breaking down our go-to pairings for each Sea Bird Wine varietal so you know exactly what to grab when you’re snacking and sipping.
When pairing wine with cheese, or really, any food, the things that will taste the best will be things that have a little bit of similarity. If you’ve ever heard the phrase “what grows together goes together,” this applies perfectly! If you’re drinking regionally, it helps to choose cheeses that are grown geographically close, if you can. If you can’t get that in-depth, try to identify nuance in the food that may come from spices, herbs or minor ingredients. This can be things like olive, fruits, bacon, etc…then select a wine that contains similar features like herbal notes, for example.
Chardonnay
Sea Bird Chardonnay (like our 2017 Courtney's Vineyard!) tend to be medium bodied, which pair perfectly in the “medium range” of cheese. Work your way down the list depending on the vintage. Newer vintages should pair with the top of the list, and if you’re drinking the Chardonnay young, could even venture into a salty, more crumbly cheese (feta, Cotija, Halloumi) and as it develops (2015 Robert's Road, anyone?), move further down the list into more buttery and then into harder, nuttier styles with age.
Avoid anything particularly pungent with Chardonnay - which means, sorry guys but blue cheeses is off the menu.
If you're looking for a more sour style of cheese, pair with:
- Sour cream
- Ricotta
- Havarti
- Chèvre
Charodonnay also love buttery, delicate cheeses like:
- Brie
- Camembert
- Burrata
- Device de bourgogne
If you’re looking for something more on the harder, nutty style to go with your older vintage Chard, go for:
- Aged gruyere
- Comte
- Provolone
- Emmental
Pinot Noir
Hard, nutty styles of cheese are the perfect pairing with a Sea Bird Pinot Noir (looking at you, 2013 Sonoma Stage Vineyard). Our Pinot Noir style is light bodied, more of a Burgundian style that captures the essence of California terroir. As a result, choosing a cheese too creamy, salty or pungent would take over your palate.
Head for the harder, nutty style cheese including:
- Aged gruyere,
- Comte
- Provolone
- Emmental
- Smoked Mozzarella
- Scamaroza
Merlot
You at me at Merlot! Aphrodite is the newest addition to our Flock - a plush, decadent Napa Valley expression with a kiss of oak makes for the happiest of hours. When sipping, opt for nutty, hard cheese or cheeses that have more of a fruity or umami quality which could be anything from:
- Aged gruyere
- Comte
- Provolone
- Emmental
- Smoked Mozzarella
- Scamaroza
- Cheddar
- Smoked Gouda
- Muenster
- Colby
- Ossau-Iraty
Cabernet Sauvignon
Our Cabernet Sauvignon styles of wine (most notably, Poseidon or Broken Rock from Napa Valley) are full bodied, and express the boldness of California terroir with the balance that holds age incredibly well. The bigger and bolder the wine, the more it can lead the show.
When sipping a Cab, avoid anything too sour or creamy - leave the ricotta and chèvre on the table. Cheese that play with fruity, nutty or umami flavors are your go-to, including:
- Cheddar
- Smoked Gouda
- Muenster
- Colby
- Ossau-Iraty
This is officially your permission to have wine and cheese for dinner. Have a particularly favorite pairing we need to know about? Tell us over on our Instagram page and tag us while you're enjoying Great Vines to Great Times with a bottle of Sea Bird.
3 Reasons To Buy A Magnum
3 Reasons To Buy Large Format Bottles
Large format wine sizes are hard to come by, but always worth adding to your cellar in for so many reasons. Here’s why we’re always down for a big bottle:
Age With Grace
This one is pure science and we’re here for it. As wine ages, oxygen moves in and out of a cork. It is a natural product after all! If you think of a magnum versus a 750ml, think about surface area: you’ve got the same cork size, but less surface area transfer! That means that the bottles age at nearly half the speed of their standard size brethren.
Stay Safe, Buy Big.
Bigger bottles mean thicker glass as you’ll notice when you pick up your standard size next to one of our magnum bottles. Sea Bird Wines magnums are bottled in thicker, darker glass that allows even more protection and room for the bottle to age slowly and gracefully…just the way we like it.
Yes you could save up that wine and store if for the perfect investment. But you could also throw one fun party and bring out the big guys to show everyone a good time. These bottles are perfect for a mixed crowd, as the novelty is a perfect conversation starter and a great chance to lure in a new wine friend who might have passed up a sip otherwise. Wine is always better when shared!
We’ve bottled just a select few magnums of the powerful 2014 Poseidon Cabernet Sauvignon that are perfectly poised for sharing with a crowd or laying down in the depths of your cellar to mature into greatness.
Do you know your bottle sizes? Here’s a cheat sheet for the Big Boys ranking in order from Tiny to Mighty...
187.5ml – Piccolo (aka a Split)
375ml – Demi or Half bottle – perfect for when you just want “one-ish” glasses with dinner
750ml – Your ride-or-die standard size bottle.
1.5 L – Magnum, which holds two standard size bottles if you’re feeling into math
3.0 L – Double Magnum (you guessed it, that’s 4 standard size bottles or 20 glasses of wine)
4.5 L – Jeroboam, which is 6 bottles (this is also where we start getting into Biblical King Naming Territory)
6.0 L – Imperial – 8 bottles worth of wine, or a very good dinner party.
9.0 L – Salmanazar – 12 bottles or a full case of wine, however you want to look at it
12.0 L – Balthazar – 16 standard size bottles
15.0 L – Nebuchadnezzar – Fun Fact: this bottle was named after the King Of Babylon which assuredly was a very good host if he was serving up this beast containing 20 bottles of wine