A Perfect Pairing: Winter 2024-25
Shops that celebrate the marriage of wine and cheese
LIKE A GOOD MARRIAGE, the perfect pairing of a wine and cheese can bring out the best in both partners.
The classic wintertime pairing of a Stilton and a tawny port is a great example. Each is good on its own, but together the flavors become something special.
The three southeastern Michigan shops featured here can help you find the perfect wine and cheese “partners” or lots of other specialty grocery items you might have on your shopping list.
The shops are as varied as the entrepreneurs who run them. All offer expert advice on the perfect cheese or wine. You can taste samples. You can even attend an event to learn more.
There is one thing that all three of these wine and cheese shops have in common: Their owners are passionate about great cheese and fabulous wine, and they are eager to share their knowledge with others.
Avoid Rubbery Supermarket Cheese
Lindsay Kennedy loves it when people come into her shop and say that they don’t like cheese.
That might sound strange coming from the owner of a wine and cheese shop, but Kennedy is thrilled to introduce people to what she describes as “real cheese, made with real ingredients.” Kennedy explains, “After eating only rubbery supermarket cheese, people’s reaction is often, ‘Whoa. This stuff is amazing.’”
Dolcetto Cheese and Specialty Goods, her Farmington-based business, offers more than 130 cheeses and more than 100 wines, as well as other specialty food items. On a recent weekday morning, her sunny shop had customers who seemed to know exactly what they were looking for. Others were tasting slivers of cheese and chatting up the experts for help in picking out their purchases.
“We try to meet people where they are,” she says. “Everyone has different needs at the end of the day.”
Earlier in her career, Kennedy worked as a restaurant wine specialist, as well as in the retail and wholesale wine sectors.
That experience shows in her wine selection, which mostly features international wines. She carries some California wines but avoids many vineyards because they don’t meet her standards for environmentally sound farming, wholesome wine production or fair employment practices.
She describes her domestic wine selection as “quirky.” Her wine selection includes carbonic macerated red wines, which are made by crushing grapes with a gas rather than a mechanical process.
“That type of fermentation makes the wine almost effervescent. It has a bit of a taste of tannins, but you really get the fruit notes,” she says.
Her education in the cheese business intensified when she purchased her shop in September 2022, switching from a franchise owner to an independent retailer in February 2023.
She is methodically researching every product she sells to make sure they align with the values she holds for her business.
Recently, she visited the Netherlands to visit Beemster Cheese, a creamery that provides several of the cheeses she sells at her shop.
“I went to the farm and met the cows,” she says with a laugh. The trip also included visits with the farmers and the factory workers. “The facilities were immaculate, and the people were happy.”
Wine and cheese pairings for winter entertaining
Tawny Port and Stilton
Quinta do Infantado Tawny Port and Colston Bassett Dairy Stilton
Mongers’ Provisions suggests this classic wintertime combination. The best Stilton of the year becomes available in early winter.
White Burgundy and Comté
Domaine de la Cadette White Burgundy and Marcel Petite Comté
Zach Berg of Mongers’ likes the combination of a white burgundy and a big mountain cheese, which has a “luxurious taste of celebration.”
Viognier & Goat Cheese
Domaine Gassier Viognier and OG Goat Cheese
Lindsay Kennedy of Dolcetto Cheese and Specialty Goods recommends this combo. The full-bodied Viognier is balanced by the tanginess of the goat cheese.
Spanish Red & Cranberry Roulé
Torremorón Tempranillo and Rians Cranberry Roulé
This pairing of a savory wine and sweet cheese makes for a “really savory and decadent treat,” Kennedy says.
Riesling & Washed-Rind Cheese
Albert Mann Riesling and Epoisses by Berthaut
“The harmony is just magical. The wine wants food, the food wants wine,” says Tommy York of Ann Arbor–based business York Food and Drink.
Cherry Wine & Smoked Gouda
Chateau Fontaine Cherry Wine and Artikaas Hickory Smoked Gouda
“In winter, I love the rich and sweet and smoky combination,” York says. “Cherry wine is also great with barbecue.”
Dolcetto offers classes and events regularly. There’s also a monthly club subscription, which features a cheese, a wine and a food product paired together.
“It’s sort of a nerdy club. We really try to push the boundaries,” says Kennedy. “Food should never be boring.”
Drink the Kind of Wine Your Grandfather Drank
Over the past seven years, Zach Berg and Will Werner’s business has evolved from a pop-up cheese and chocolate shop to two Mongers’ Provisions stores and a restaurant, The Rind.
“We listened to our crazy instincts and what our customers told us they wanted,” says Berg.
That spirit of listening became a part of their DNA as they built out their operations, which now include cheese, wine and specialty groceries at their stores in Detroit’s Midtown neighborhood and Berkley.
It also was a factor last year when they opened The Rind, a restaurant next door to the Berkley store. The side-by-side location allows diners to wander over to the store after dinner to shop for ingredients that were a part of their meal.
Berg, Werner and their team value the community-building aspect of talking with their customers. They also feel it is perfectly suited to the type of items they sell. Wine and cheese are both products that are influenced by factors that can be beyond a shopper’s awareness: seasonal fluctuations, ingredients and manufacturing processes.
For example, there are more than 19 ingredients that winemakers can add that do not need to be listed on a label.
Isaac Helsen, Mongers’ beverage and retail manager, researches wine from around the world. He not only understands the taste of the wine; he knows its backstory.
“When Isaac makes a selection for us, people can trust that it’s a natural, low-intervention wine,” says Berg. “Or, as some of our winemakers like to say, ‘I make wine the way my grandfather did.’”
That backstory also includes wine from interesting places.
“We love to find wines from regions that you might not have thought of,” says Helsen. “When we first introduce someone to a Slovenian wine, they’re often surprised at how good it is. People don’t think of Slovenia as a winemaking region, but it has been making wine longer than France and for about the same amount of time as Italy.”
A white wine from Slovenia, Kobal Wines’ Šipon Furmint, is one of the most popular wines served at the restaurant. It’s also available through the store.
Cheese has a similar story that is often lost between the creamery and the customer.
“We eat cheese at certain times of the year without really thinking about it,” says Berg.
He uses Stilton as an example. It’s typically eaten around the winter holidays.
“It’s a six-month cheese, so the cheese available in early winter is the best because it is produced from July milk,” he says. “That’s when the best grass with the most biodiversity is growing for cows to eat.”
Understanding the stories of the products and their producers is important to the team at Mongers’.
“We’re not just a small business; we’re a constellation of many small businesses that come together in our shops,” says Berg.
Find an Inspired Shopkeeper
Tommy York’s customers come from all over the world.
When people come into his Ann Arbor–based business, York Food and Drink, they bring with them food and beverage preferences formed in faraway lands and nearby neighborhoods.
York and his team have an ease that helps people find just what they were looking for—or, often, a great new cheese or wine that they didn’t even know existed.
“We see a whole mix of ethnicities in Ann Arbor,” says York. Europeans now living in the area grew up with the types of artisanal cheeses and wines he sells. Others are encountering them for the first time.
“When people say, ‘I’ve never had a Cabernet Franc,’ I can say, ‘We have one open, would you like to taste it?’” he says. “That makes a world of difference. A wine bottle is probably the worst package possible to transmit what’s inside. It does a good job of protecting the wine, but it doesn’t communicate anything about the flavor. Unless you grew up in the Loire Valley or on a winery in California, how would you know what some of these wines taste like?”
The ability to offer these spur-of-the-moment tastings is a part of the evolution of York, which consists of a restaurant as well as a specialty grocery space.
York and a partner bought the business in 2001. Over the years it has been refined and expanded. Today, it is a bustling coffee shop in the morning, and a thriving lunch and dinner spot featuring Spanish sandwiches called bocatas and classic American deli sandwiches. The grocery section carries items from around the world. Adding a Class C serving license was a significant change, allowing spirits and wines to be served with meals and for tastings at the wine counter and in-store events. About 90 percent of the products they sell are internationally sourced; the rest are domestic.
His advice to shoppers?
“Find a shopkeeper or someone behind the counter who is inspired,” he says. “Find someone who is excited to share their passion for food and drink with you.”
York says that farmstead cheeses and international wines can now be found in some surprising places. For example, some grocery stores now have Murray’s cheese sections, which feature high-quality cheeses from the renowned New York shop that was acquired by Kroger in 2017.
York recalls a recent conversation with a friend in the business who was asked, “What are we going to do now that the cheeses we pioneered are now in Kroger?’” York liked the friend’s response: “That means we did our jobs. Let’s find something else to turn people on to.”
Sharon Morton is a feature and business writer working in Metro Detroit.
