Gruyere Cheese Wine Pairing

This article covers the Gruyère cheese wine pairing experiments we have done in recent years. We originally published it for a Wine Pairing Weekend event on pairing wine and cheese, and have come back to update it with our latest findings. We also highlight some ideas for cooking with Gruyère.

blue plate with Gruyere cheese and prosciutto, served with a red and white wine in the background.

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Gruyere wine pairing – quick picks
What is Gruyere cheese?
Cooking with Gruyère cheese
Gruyère pairing details
More pairing wine and cheese articles

Gruyere wine pairing – quick picks

Ok, let’s start with a quick summary of wine pairings for Gruyère cheese for those of you looking for a quick answer to “what wine goes with Gruyère cheese?”. Then we will take a deeper dive into the topic for readers wanting more information.

Our favorite pairings

The pairings we have tested that work the best with a Gruyère cheese plate:

Chardonnay
Alpine wines (Jura red blend, Vin de Savoie Blanc)
Medium bodied rosé
Fruit-forward red wine- a blend or a Frappato

We also recently enjoyed a Sauvignon Blanc from the Graves region of Bordeaux. It wasn’t a side by side comparison with my other recommendations above, but I’d say it worked but wasn’t quite as good as some other pairings we tried.

We love testing wine pairings, so will be adding to the last as we identify more pairings to recommend to you!

Other recommended pairings

Other wines frequently mentioned as Gruyére pairings around the web include:

Riesling (such a versatile pairing wine!)
Sparkling wine such as Cava or Champagne
Pinot Noir (with some caveats noted further along in this article)

OK, now let’s move on to more detail about Gruyère cheese and wines to pair with it.

What is Gruyere cheese?

Gruyère cheese is a Swiss cheese with a rich history and distinct flavor profile. Named after the town of Gruyères in Switzerland, this cheese has been produced for centuries using traditional methods that have been carefully preserved.

Gruyère is made from unpasteurized cow’s milk and aged for a minimum of three months, although some varieties can be aged for much longer. The cheese has a firm yet pliable texture with small, scattered holes throughout, and a pale yellow color.

The flavor of Gruyère is complex and nutty, with hints of sweetness and a slight tanginess. Its balance of savory and fruity notes, make it a versatile cheese that can be enjoyed on its own, melted in dishes like fondue or gratins, or used in sandwiches and salads. That’s a good segue to some of things we’ve cooked up with Gruyère!

Cooking with Gruyère cheese

While my primary purpose in writing this article is to cover wine pairings that work when you are serving a plate of Gruyère as a snack or appetizer, we have cooked up some good recipes with Gruyère.

Vegetarian Baked Pasta

This Vegetarian Baked Pasta with Spinach and Gruyere is tasty casserole featuring the savory cheese. We tried it with a couple of different red wines, and Pinot Noir was the best pairing for the recipe.

As we’ll cover more later, Pinot Noir often comes up as a suggestion for Gruyere cheese pairing.

Spinach and Pear Salad

Adding shredded Gruyere cheese can bring some nice nutty flavor to a salad! We lean into that idea in our Spinach and Pear Salad recipe.

There’s a bit of spice in the salad dressing, so if you were serving it on its own as a starter course I would think about a sparkling with or may a Gewurztraminer.

I have also served the spinach and pear salad with our salad with our Leftover Steak Pasta recipe. We opened a Lagrein from the Alto Adige region to go with that meal. Although I had the steak more in mind when picking the Italian red wine, it actually worked well with the Gruyere topped salad, too.

Mushroom Mac and Cheese Casserole

Back to melting that Gruyere cheese in a baked pasta recipe! You can use a variety of cheeses for our Mushroom Mac and Cheese Casserole, but it is especially good with Gruyere.

We paired the mushroom mac and cheese dish with the Chateau de Mountfaucon Baron Louis Lirac Rouge, a blend from the Lirac AOC in the Rhone region. It is comprised of 50% Grenache, 15% Syrah, 15% Cinsault, 10% Syrah and 10% Mourvedre. Definitely a good pairing for a hearty dish with baked Gruyere cheese!

Pasta with Gruyere Cheese and Bacon

You might see a theme here. We like adding Gruyere cheese to our pasta dishes!

pasta with gruyere cheese, bacon and greens on a white plate.

This Pasta with Gruyere Cheese and Bacon recipe also folds in some collard greens, making it a complete meal. We most recently enjoyed it with a good Chardonnay.

Gruyère pairing details

OK, let’s break down the details of our favorite wine pairings for Gruyère cheese. My original round of testing was all done with a medium Gruyère cheese from Wegman’s. I figured that was a pretty representative example of a Gruyerè cheese you’d be likely to pick up at a store in the United States.

I’ve come back to update this article with Gruyère cheese that I got at Nouvelle Maison in Winchester, Massachusetts. They specialize in French cheese and wine, along with other gourmet food and coffee. Worth checking out if you are in the area! Two of the three Alpine wines I cover below are from Nouvelle Maison.

Alpine wines

I will be covering more about Alpine wines in upcoming French Winophiles article. For now, I wanted to update this Gruyère wine pairing article with some recent pairings that worked nicely.

Turning to the French Alpine regions of Jura and Savoie is natural to pair with Gruyère cheese, which originates from the nearby Swiss mountain town of Gruyère.

A Jura red wine served with a cheese plate. — *Jura red wine served with cheese. The Gruyere is the one further from the wine.*

We started by pairing the 2020 Bourdy Côtes du Jura ($43, ABV given as 11 – 14%) with some Gruyère. The Jura red wine is a blend of Trousseau, Poulsard and Pinot Noir, roughly equal part of each. With a light body and earthy flavor profile, along with red berry fruit, it is a good red wine option for Gruyère cheese.

Then I turned to trying two Savoie white wines. We started with the 2021 Jean Masson Apremont ($21, 12% ABV), which is 100% Jacquère grapes. That is typical for Apremont wines, which is a cru region within Savoie.

I get pine notes on the nose of the Apremont white wine, with lemon curd, minerality and a fresh clean finish on the palate. This was a solid pairing pairing for the Gruyère cheese, although I liked it even better with another cheese we sampled. (stay tuned for that!). The jam added to the cheese plate was a nice touch, providing a contrast to the dry Gruyere.

Apremont white wine served with cheese. — *Apremont wine with cheese. The Gruyere is closer to the crackers.*

With more Gruyère on hand, and another Savoie white wine in the cellar, I couldn’t resist trying one more Alpine wine pairing for Gruyère. So I opened the 2023 Maison Phillippe Viallet Savoie Blanc ($18, 11.5% ABV) the other night. This is a blend of Jacquère, Chasselas, Chardonnay and Altesse.

This Savoie Blanc has honeysuckle notes on the nose. Peach fruit and some tropical notes, a touch of kiwi, on the palate. Notable acidity. Another good wine pairing choice for Gruyere cheese! And stay tuned for the lentil soup recipe we enjoyed with it!

McGrail Family Chardonnay

The 2021 McGrail Family Chardonnay (14.2% ABV, $32) was probably my favorite pairing for Gruyere cheese during our recent round of testing. I had this bottle as part of our recent exploration of Livermore Valley wines.

While the McGrail Chardonnay does have some of the classic California Chardonnay profile, such as butter and creaminess, I was struck by the freshness of this Chardonnay. In particular, the tropical fruit really came through in my tasting of the Chardonnay.

The creaminess of the Chard had good body to go with the Gruyere cheese, and the fresh fruit notes were a refreshing counterpoint to the dry, nutty aspects of the cheese.

While the McGrail Chardonnay worked particularly well with the cheese, I would think most good quality Chardonnays would work well with Gruyere. I’m going to have to test a White Burgundy soon — in addition to simply being a fan, Burgundy isn’t too far from Gruyere, Switzerland.

For more about this wine and Livermore Valley Wines in general, check out my winemaker interview with Mark Clarin, from McGrail Vineyards. We also liked this Chardonnay with our slow cooker pulled pork recipe!

As shown in the photo at the top of the article, we tried the McGrail Merlot as well as the Chardonnay with the Gruyere cheese. It’s a nice Merlot, but I definitely prefer the Chardonnay with the cheese.

Farmhouse Red Blend

The Farmhouse California Red Blend ($12) was my favorite red wine pairing for Gruyere cheese during our testing. This is a blend from Cline, comprised primarily of Zinfandel and Syrah, with a small amount of other red grapes.

The Farmhouse red is fruit froward with low acidity, qualities that I found made for a pleasing pairing with Gruyere. I found the higher acid wines, by contrast, didn’t play well with the dryness of the cheese.

Frappato from Sicily

Recalling that I wrote here that a fruit forward red wine can go well with Gruyère, when tasting the w/o Frappato ($20, 13.5% ABV) I thought I should try it with the cheese. We had a bit of Gruyère left after sampling some with Alpine wines recently.

Gruyere cheese on a plate served with Frappato, a red wine from Sicily.

Frappato is a light bodied red wine grape native to Sicily. The w/o Frappato is made with organically grown grapes. This red has violets on the nose, bing cherry fruit and a hint of some herbal notes. Sure enough, it went very well with the Gruyère cheese. I would definitely consider this one of the better red wine pairing options for Gruyere that I’ve tried.

Check out our article on Sicilian wine grapes for more pairing ideas for Frappato.

Dracaena Rosé

plate of gruyere cheese served with rosé wine.

The 2022 Dracaena Cordyline Rosé (12.4% ABV, $26) from Paso Robles is a 50 / 50 blend of Tempranillo and Grenache. This is a flavorful, medium-bodied rosé with with melon fruit. We enjoyed it on one of our first porch sipping evenings of the spring!

This rosé pairing worked pretty well with the Gruyere, but next time I do the pairing, a bit of prosciutto on the cheese plate will make it even better! I would say medium to full bodied rosés can work well with a Gruyere cheese plate, but some charcuterie and /or perhaps some olives makes that rosé pairing option event better.

Graves Sauvignon Blanc

plate with Gruyere cheese and prosciutto wrapped asparagus, paired with a Sauvignon Blanc white wine from Graves, Bordeaux.

We had a chance to try the 2022 Château Langlet Graves Sauvignon Blanc ($23, 13.5% ABV, complimentary sample provided) with a plate that included some Gruyere as well as prosciutto wrapped asparagus. I got peach and citrus on the nose, with lemon zest and acidity on the palate.

This White Bordeaux (100% Sauvignon) from the Graves region worked pretty well with the Gruyere. But I have to say, it worked even better with the asparagus / prosciutto combo! The Chateau Langlet also was very good paired with our ground pork and cabbage recipe!