The cooler days are now here, and you’ll need to have some red on hand. Chateau Pegau’s Cuvée Maclura Côtes du Rhône ($22) brings out blackberry and black pepper notes in this blend of 60% Grenache, 20% Syrah, 10% Mourvedre, and 10% Cinsault. So good with comté cheese: nutty and creamy but sharp at the same time. 

They say what grows together goes together, and Côtes du Rhône and Comté cheese territories are connected by the Rhône river in France. Good cheesemaking is so similar to good winemaking—and both of these areas have unique land that they try to bring to life in their products, making them European Protected Designations of Origin (46% of wine and 5% of cheese production in France are PDOs).

Côtes du Rhône has a wide variety of soils and terrains, with low-lying garrigue shrubs that create herbal notes in red wines. And Comté comes from the Jura Mountains, where the cold weather forced farmers to pool their milk together to make hard cheeses that could last through the winter.

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