Summer also means enjoying Gorgonzola PDO cheese and sipping a fresh beer with friends, but how choose the best pairing?
In the past years, Afidop, the Association of dairies producing Italian PDOs and PGIs, drew up a list of 25 cheeses, including Gorgonzola PDO, with the suggested best beer pairing.
These two products share many characteristics: Gorgonzola PDO and beer both result from fermentation processes: that of milk caused by rennet and that of must by the action of yeasts. Both are, in fact, “live” products whose taste may vary over time and with maturing and ageing.
The freshness and effervescence of beer are able to soften and expand the taste of some cheeses. It should not be forgotten, however, that the most successful pairing is not obtained by blunting the sharpest characteristics of one or the other ingredient, but by making them stand out properly.
The right pairing is therefore with beers that stand up to equally complex, intense and pungent flavours: the Ipa, an English beer with strong hops and a good alcohol content, very fashionable lately, the Belgian Trappist beers and blond abbey beers, magically combine with spicy Gorgonzola PDO, while the double malt, much consumed in northern Europe, match better with sweet Gorgonzola PDO. There are also many beers to pair that can be found in craft breweries throughout Italy.
