How cheese makes finest wines taste like cheap plonk

For generations, it has been the fare of choice at charity fundraisers and suburban soirées: a cube of cheddar on a cocktail stick and a glass of cheap red wine.

Now, it seems, the organisers of cheese and wine parties were right all along to choose plonk rather than premier crus to go with their fromage.

Scientists have found that, when sampling a fine claret or expensive burgundy, the last foodstuff it should be paired with is cheese. The study, which submitted the tastebuds of 11 drinkers to eight cheeses combined with cheap and expensive wines, found the cheese always masked the flavours of a pricey vintage.

Where the tasters would have expected to hold forth on the berry and oak flavours of a full-bodied cabernet sauvignon or the light tannins of a pinot noir, it was found they were indistinguishable from a bottle of plonk.

New Scientist magazine said that the strongest-flavoured cheeses - stilton and gorgonzola - overwhelmed the flavours of wine more than milder products such as mozzarella. But the American researchers found all the cheeses reduced the flavours and aromas of wine, regardless of cost, exploding the myth that a fine cheese can be enhanced by a perfect wine.

Hildegarde Heymann, professor of viticulture and oenology at the University of California, who coordinated the study, said: "Whatever the cost of the wine, each cheese reduced sensitivity to the flavours of the drink. The overall reduction was small - about 0.4 on a scale of one to 10 - but cheese detracted from the flavour of the wine."

The researchers think that molecules of fat in the cheese may coat the mouth and deaden perceptions of other flavours.