and pour over well-buttered toast.

[Illustration]

_Chapter Eleven_

"Fit for Drink"

A country without a fit drink for cheese has no cheese fit for
drink.

Greece was the first country to prove its epicurean fitness, according
to the old saying above, for it had wine to tipple and sheep's milk
cheese to nibble. The classical Greek cheese has always been Feta, and
no doubt this was the kind that Circe combined most suitably with wine
to make a farewell drink for her lovers. She put further sweetness and
body into the stirrup cup by stirring honey and barley meal into it.
Today we might whip this up in an electric mixer to toast her memory.

While a land flowing with milk and honey is the ideal of many, France,
Italy, Spain or Portugal, flowing with wine and honey, suit a lot of
gourmets better. Indeed, in such vinous-caseous places cheese is on
the house at all wine sales for prospective customers to snack upon
and thus bring out the full flavor of the cellared vintages. But
professional wine tasters are forbidden any cheese between sips. They
may clear their palates with plain bread, but nary a crumb of
Roquefort or cube of Gruyere in working hours, lest it give the wine a
spurious nobility.

And, speaking of Roquefort, Romanee has the closest affinity for it.
Such affinities are also found in Pont l'Eveque and Beaujolais, Brie
and red champagne, Coulommiers and any good _vin rose_. Heavenly
marriages are made in Burgundy between red and white wines of both
Cotes, de Nuits and de Baune, and Burgundian cheeses such as Epoisses,
Soumaintarin and Saint-Florentin. Pommard and Port-Salut seem to be
made for each other, as do Chateau Margaux and Camembert.

A great cheese for a great wine is the rule that brings together in
the neighboring provinces such notables as Sainte Maure, Valencay,
Vendome and the Loire wines--Vouvray, Saumur and Anjou. Gruyere mates
with Chablis, Camembert with St. Emilion; and any dry red wine, most
commonly claret, is a fit drink for the hundreds of other fine French
cheeses.

Every country has such happy marriages, an Italian standard being
Provolone and Chianti. Then there is a most unusual pair, French
Neufchatel cheese and Swiss Neuchatel wine from just across the
border. Switzerland also has another cheese favorite at home--Trauben
(grape cheese), named from the Neuchatel wine in which it is aged.

One kind of French Neufchatel cheese, Bondon, is also uniquely