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If there’s a food and drink combination that’s more misunderstood, more just plain wrong and yet more blindly followed than wine and cheese I don’t know of it.

Wine and cheese is considered by many to be the gastronomic mating equivalent of when Brad met Angelina – a pairing so perfect that it has become food law dutifully followed by restaurants and at dinner parties around the world. I’d put money on the fact that whenever you see the cheese plate coming out you automatically look around to check where that bottle of red wine is, don’t you….

Perfectly understandable of course. We’ve been told for decades that wine – specifically red wine -  is the obvious partner to cheese. After all the Romans did it, and if it’s good enough for Julius Ceasar then it’s good enough for us, right?

Well no. No it’s not all right any more. It’s high time this particular food and drink myth was busted. The fact is that beer is a better partner to cheese than wine. That’s a bold statement to make but I’m going to tell you why.

I spent several very happy months travelling around Sweden in 2009 conducting a beer v wine dinner event with a very nice sommelier called Henrik. Before each event we would sit and talk (often rather heatedly and at great length) about food and drink. One of our favourite topics was what to serve with cheese and here rather surprisingly Henrik was prepared to raise something of a white flag.

You see that fact is that Henrik and a lot of other wine experts know the dirty secret that wine isn’t actually that good with cheese. It can however make average wines taste a little better – a trick that has allowed hotels and restaurants to flog us countless millions of bottles of crap wine for years. Cheese coats the palate and blunts the flavours of wine – even the bad flavours. It’s the great equaliser but it’s more a food marriage of convenience rather than a love affair.

If you want to experience some real ‘gastro passion’ you’ve got to be prepared to break this stupid food law and try beer instead,

Beer harmonises with cheese in a way wine simply can’t. Beer and cheese share a common ancestry, both traditionally produced on farms and both containing plenty of earthy, musty and yeasty flavours that complement each other so well. If you think wine has a historical right to cheese think again. Monks in Belgium knew of the heavenly match of cheese and beer as far back as the Middle Ages, happily consuming both in their monasteries even to this day.

Wine is a bit of a one trick pony when it comes to cheese, relying largely on the interplay between fruity sweetness and salty/sour cheese. But beer can do all that -  and much more.

The rich, nutty caramel malt flavours of beer are impossible to find in wine yet they meld effortless with the nutty flavours of many cheeses such as mature cheddars. The spice and acidity of a Belgium wit beer is a mouth-watering combo with goats cheese, cutting through the cheese’s soft body whereas red wine merely bounces off it.

And don’t even get me started on Stilton and barley wine (yes, this is a beer), where the decadent rich fruits and deep malt flavours of barley wine can take an earthy, barnyard and salty Stilton to a whole new level.

As with all food and drink pairings there are no written rules but here are some of my favourite beer and cheese matches to get you started:

Cheddar with IPA – the idea here is to match the big hoppy flavours of IPAs with the sharpness of mature cheddars.

Goats Cheese and Mozzarella with wheat beers – both these cheeses are light and fresh so the uplifting, breezy flavours of a Belgium Wit beer or German Heffeweizen complement each other perfectly.

Gouda with low-hop/high malt beers – because this style of cheese is usually cured with brine, wine or even beer it’s best enjoyed with a milder beer that leans towards malty sweetness rather than bitter hops. The nutty character of brown ales can work wonders with Gouda!

Blue cheese with porters and stouts – powerful blues need a powerful beer to match them and the deep roasted, chocolate and coffee qualities in many porters and stouts do just that.

Brie and pilsner/lager – brie and other soft cheeses with bloomy rinds often have fairly low taste profiles so it’s good to match them with more delicate beers such as pilsners. An added benefit is that pilsners/lagers are generally more carbonated, helping to scrub the mouth out after eating sticky soft cheeses.

I found this video of perhaps the world’s greatest authority on beer and food, Garrett Oliver, who is not only the head brewer of the highly respected Brooklyn Brewery in the US he’s also the author of ‘The BrewMaster’s Table’, a book I consider to be the bible on beer and food matches and one I’d warmly recommend you buy.

The specific cheeses and beers he tries on film are hard or impossible to find in Sweden but his message is spot on. So move over wine. Cheese has got a new best friend and its name is beer!