In our latest podcast, host and Master Sommelier Christopher Tanghe broaches the complexities of pairing wine with cheese, as it’s often assumed that the two are easily matched, in an interview with Bronwen and Francis Percival. Bronwen selected four cheeses and tasked Chris and Francis with choosing pairings that they thought would elevate the eating experience. Tune in to find out who was victorious in the pairing competition!
Bronwen Percival is the technical director for Neal’s Yard Dairy in the UK and co-authored Reinventing the Wheel: Milk, Microbes, and the Fight for Real Cheese with her husband, Francis. She oversees the quality, consistency, and integrity of all the cheeses sold by the famed UK dairy, which was founded in 1979 and works with more than 40 cheesemakers from Britain and Ireland.
Francis Percival is the food editor for The World of Fine Wine magazine. In addition to his writing, Francis is a judge in the magazine’s World’s Best Wine Awards and teaches about cheese at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, Italy.
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Francis Percival is food editor for The World of Fine Wine. His work won Louis Roederer Best International Wine Columnist in 2013 and Pio Cesare Food & Wine Writer of the Year in 2015. In addition to his writing, Francis is a judge in the magazine’s World’s Best Wine List Awards; he also teaches on cheese at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, Italy.
Together with Bronwen Percival, he is the author of Reinventing the Wheel: Milk, Microbes, and the Fight for Real Cheese (University of California Press; 2017). Reinventing the Wheel won a 2018 Gourmand Award and was Wine & Spirits magazine’s Book of the Year 2017.
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Bronwen Percival is the technical director for Neal’s Yard Dairy in London. In addition to working with cheesemakers and the company’s maturation team to select and optimize the quality of the cheese they sell,she works to mobilize collaboration between cheesemakers and the scientific community. In 2012, she instigated a biennial conference on the Science of Artisan Cheese. In early 2014, she spent two months in the Dutton Lab at Harvard University studying the role of marine-associated Proteobacteria on cheese rinds. Along with Dr. Benjamin Wolfe, she co-founded the website MicrobialFoods.org, a scientific resource for producers, purveyors, and enthusiasts of artisan microbial foods. She is the co-author, with her husband Francis, of Reinventing the Wheel: Milk, Microbes, and the Fight for Real Cheese (Bloomsbury, 2017).
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Thanks Erin! Glad you found it useful. Cheers, Chris
Very much enjoyed this podcast, I am teaching a food and wine pairing class this week and I found it most helpful!