Cheese and wine pairings

Not a usual topic for this weblog, I know, but I liked this article recommending pairing bad wine with good cheese:

If you've got some ropey plonk to get rid of, throw a cheese and wine party. But don't use the good stuff, as new research shows that the wine buff's favourite accompaniment masks the complex flavours of wine.

From subtle emmental and mozzarella to the battery-acid bite of gorgonzola, cheese dampens down the aromatic fruits, oaks and astringency of red wine, according to tests on wine tasters.

"When you have cheese at the same time, all of these flavours are masked a little," said Hildegarde Heymann at the department of viticulture and enology at the University of California, Davis.

I think the article has it backwards -- you should pair lousy cheese with good wine.

It is common, at the end of a meal, to have run out of food but still have a glass of red slightly oxidized red wine left at the bottom of the bottle. I've found that drinking this with parmegian cheese (cheap, supermarket parm) is a delicious and cheap dessert. I find drinking tannic red wines by themselves to be foul, but drinking them with any salty cheese to be quite wonderful.