Raclette and wine, round after round

Half a wheel of Raclette du Valais weighs about two and a half kilos. The original recipe from the Valais raclette producers' body says that feeds eight, together with 1.6 kilos of small potatoes boiled in their skins, gherkins and pickled silver onions. You eat round after round, for as long as the cheese keeps melting. That is a different evening from a fondue, and it asks different things of the wine.

Racler means to scrape

Melting cheese by the fire in Valais goes back at least to 1574. The dish only officially took the name raclette in 1874. It comes from «racler», which in the local French dialect means to scrape: you let the cut face of the cheese melt, then scrape it off the wheel with a knife onto a warm plate.

Raclette du Valais AOP is made only in Valais and only from raw milk. A whole wheel weighs around five kilos and ripens for about three months. The recipe even gives a measurement for the grill: the cut face should sit at least six centimetres below the heat. Originally the cheese was melted in front of an open wood fire, and many restaurants in Valais still do it that way.

What gherkins and dried meat do to the wine

With fondue, you dip bread into cheese. With raclette, the plate fills up with things that have plenty of flavour of their own. Gherkins and silver onions are in the original recipe, and the Valais regional brand suggests cured meat and rye bread on the side.

The vinegar changes the wine. The enology team at Virginia Tech in the US demonstrated it with lemon juice: after a sour bite, a wine tastes less acidic. So a white with gentle acidity starts to taste flat by the third gherkin. That is why, with raclette, we like whites whose acidity carries a bit more weight.

The dried meat brings salt, and according to the same source, salt makes rough tannins stand out. Fat and protein, on the other hand, bind tannin and soften it, so the cheese is on your side. For red wine this means it is welcome at the table as long as its tannin is fine. A grippy, tannic red quickly turns harsh next to salty meat.

Fendant, and when we switch

The raclette producers themselves recommend a Fendant from Valais, and if there is not much vinegar on your plate it is the obvious choice. Our Fendant from Kaléidoscope in Savièse has 11.1 percent alcohol and soft acidity.

Here is a recommendation you are free to argue with: if you eat a lot of gherkins, switch to a white with more acidity. Our pick then is the Blanco from Guímaro in the Ribeira Sacra. It is 70 percent Godello, with Treixadura, Albariño, Torrontés and Loureira making up the rest, the way white wines there used to be blended from several varieties. Seven months on the fine lees give it a little body, and on the palate you get fresh acidity and a slightly bitter finish.

The second switch comes from Penedès, south-west of Barcelona. The Terraprima Blanc from Can Ràfols blends Xarel·lo, Macabeo and Muscat from limestone soils in the Massís del Garraf, all organically farmed. Part of the Xarel·lo is aged in chestnut barrels. At 11.5 percent it is almost as light as the Fendant, and it smells of pear and mountain herbs.

Rosé with the dried meat

If you start on the dried meat while the grill heats up, open the Carrascal from Viña de Eufemia. In Utiel-Requena, Bobal is mostly known as a dark, powerful red. For the Carrascal it comes from vines over 60 years old on chalky soil near Casas de Eufemia and becomes a dry rosé at 12.5 percent, aged four months on the fine lees. It smells of red berries and has lively acidity. It has hardly any tannin, because for a rosé the juice stays on the skins only briefly, so the salt has nothing to rub against. We keep it on the table when the cheese arrives.

Red, but light and cool

With dried meat and potatoes on the plate, raclette leaves more room for a red than fondue does. The Mencía wines from our fondue story work here too. Here are two more we like to open.

The Vel'Uveyra from Ronsel do Sil in the Ribeira Sacra is 85 percent Mencía, plus Garnacha and Mouratón, grown on granite. It ferments spontaneously in large 5,500-litre casks and then spends seven months in 500-litre barrels. At 12 percent it is lightly built, with fine tannin. In Galician, Vel'Uveyra means «look at the vineyard».

From Casas de Eufemia, the same village as the Carrascal, comes the Pico d'Agila from Carres: pure Garnacha from 60-year-old bush vines that grow without irrigation. It is aged in used barriques to keep the fruit up front, and it pours a bright, light ruby with cherry and raspberry. At 13.5 percent it has a little more alcohol than the Vel'Uveyra.

We serve both reds at 14 to 16 °C. In winter that means straight from a cool cellar to the table, or half an hour in the fridge if the bottle has been standing in a warm flat.

An evening of many rounds

Raclette lasts longer than a pot of fondue, and over several hours every percent of alcohol counts. That is why the wines in this story are mostly light: Fendant at 11.1, Terraprima at 11.5, Vel'Uveyra at 12 and Carrascal at 12.5 percent.

Whites and rosé belong at 8 to 10 °C, and the Terraprima can be a little warmer at 10 to 12 °C. Next to a hot raclette grill an open bottle warms up fast. So put the whites in an ice bucket on the table instead of carrying them back to the fridge after every round.

You will find the Fendant and more wines for a cheese evening on our page Wine for fondue and raclette. And if next weekend you would rather bring out the caquelon, carry on with our fondue story.