Flavor Pairing of traditional Swedish cheeses and Swedish wines

As Sweden is a recent wine-producing country, this product is not deeply rooted in Swedish consumption habits. Thus, the aim of this study is to combine Swedish wines with traditional Swedish cheeses, and to understand why these combinations are appropriate or not.
Two wines were studied: Josefinelust and Immelen, both from Kullabergs vineyard. They were paired with six cheeses: Grevé, Herrgård and Präst, each with two different maturation times (12 and 18 months). The cheeses were characterized by Quantitative Descriptive Analysis (n=6), texture and color analysis, and consumer test (n=49). They were also studied paired with the wines during two separate consumer tests, one with Immelen (n=36) and one with Josefinelust (n=59).
There were no significant differences of liking between all of the cheese and wine pairs, despite differences in texture, appearance and liking of the cheeses alone. Consumers rather liked the combinations, with an average score of 6.11 for sparkling wine and 6.16 for white wine, which are relatively far from the maximum liking score of 9. Therefore, the pairs cannot be considered ideal, for reasons such as acidity, sweetness, aromatic similarity, consumer experience or balance. There are significant differences in balance depending on the wine used. While for Immelen all the pairs are dominated by wine, 18-month cheeses dominate the pairs with Josefinelust.