THEY TAKE MYSTERY OUT OF PAIRING WINE AND CHEESE
budget vino as a graduate student, the Hampton resident is in the final stretches of one of the world’s most challenging wine education programs. And she’s about to celebrate the first anniversary of the wine and cheese tasting classes she teaches alongside cheese expert Danielle Doebereiner at her Butler County cheese shop.
Their common goal: to demystify the often mystifying worlds of wine and cheese, and make them more accessible by demonstrating how to taste, pair and enjoy them.
“It’s good for people to come out of their shell and try new things, and not be intimidated,” said Rautji, 34.
“People really seem hungry to learn about the wines and the cheese equally,” agreed Doebereiner. “I feel like there is always a moment in the classes where someone is ‘Oh, wow!’ and is surprised by something.”
Depending on the number of wines and cheeses featured, prices range from $85 to $130 per person for a class that takes anywhere from 1½ to 2 hours.
A recent Valentine-inspired bubbly-and-cheese tasting on Feb. 15 included six rosés, still red, orange and Franciacorta wines paired with 18 cheeses that included seahive cheddar from Utah, Abbaye St. Mère from France and sottocenere, an herby, truffle-studded cow’s milk cheese from Italy.
Also making a showy appearance on the slate tasting board were Tête de moine, a semi-hard, raw cow’s milk cheese made in Switzerland that is scraped into feathery, flower-like cones, and Indiana-crafted O’Banon, a fresh goat cheese wrapped in bourbon-soaked chestnut leaves.
Rautji instructed students: “Take a small taste of cheese, and then a small taste of wine to see how it changes flavor and complements each other.”
The women’s first anniversary tasting on April 18 will offer a similarly wide variety, too.
To keep it intimate, class size is generally limited to around 25 people and is often smaller. The focus frequently depends on where Rautji has recently traveled and the artisan cheeses Doebereiner has on hand, “and we keep them gently themed so they don’t get repetitive,” she said.
Everything is meticulously sampled beforehand to ensure they match nicely.
“We want each class to have an expansive range of both wine and cheese,” said Doebereiner.
Crafting a career
Wine culture has traditionally been viewed through an affluent, Eurocentric lens, says Rautji. So appreciating the difference between, say, an oaked chardonnay and a steel-barreled sauvignon blanc wasn’t something she grew up learning. It didn’t help that the Indian state in which she became a young adult — and left at age 22 to pursue a graduate degree in biomedical engineering at CMU — set the legal drinking age at 25.
The Indian Somm is, however, a “very curious” person by nature. So following that first sip after moving to Pittsburgh in 2012, she tried everything she could get her hands on through tastings and her travels to slowly, and determinedly, build her palate.
In 2021, she took her wine education to another level by pursing professional certification through the London-based Wine & Spirit Education Trust. By year’s end, she’ll join the ranks of just 11,000 people to successfully complete a Level Four Diploma in Wines, an expert-level qualification covering all aspects of wine.
“My philosophy is: The best way to understand something and not be intimidated is to be educated by it,” she said.
Doebereiner, who grew up in Ohio, is just as serious about cheese.
Early in her career, the 39-yearold Mars resident worked in both the medical and oil and gas fields. She was also a fashion stylist before taking a job in October 2021 with Infinity Custom Homes. One day, she opened up a copy of 2017’s “The Book of Cheese” by Liz Thorpe that was being used as a prop in a model home and started reading. Something about it lit a fire in her soul.
The experience led to more reading and research on the wide variety of cheeses here and abroad, and where cheese lovers like herself could find them around the city.
“It just opened up a whole new world for me,” she says, “and that inspired me to start looking at opening a cheese shop.”
Building cheese boards
Realizing she needed some hands-on experience, she started creating cheese boards at a local commercial kitchen for friends and others. She also entered a cheese certification program at Cheese State University in Wisconsin, reached out to some 200 creameries across the U.S. to start relationships and, in July 2022, launched Nosh & Curd in a former Curves location on Grand Avenue in Mars.
Since opening, Doebereiner has gone from offering two dozen mostly domestic cheeses to around 120, 60% of which are imported. Some of the best sellers are quite rare and hard to find, such as the fudgy and rich Rogue River Blue that’s made in very limited quantities and released every fall. Despite the $85 per pound price tag, she sold all four wheels last year by December.
Inventory at Nosh & Curd is built both on requests from adventurous eaters who ask for cheeses they’ve seen or enjoyed on their travels and what personally sounds interesting or fun to Doebereiner.
“I just see if it will go, and if customers like it, it opens up a whole new species of cheese for me to bring in,” she says. That includes the washed-rind and alpine-style cheeses that are currently very popular.
As with wine, Doebereiner says many people are intimidated by cheeses they’ve never heard of. They also often don’t know how to best appreciate it. So when she met Rautji at a food influencer event in February 2022, it was inevitable they would hit it off.
“She mentioned she was starting her wine studies and I told her, ‘I would love to do a wine and cheese pairing class, but want to do it with someone who knows wine inside and out like I do the cheese,’ ” Doebereiner recalled.
When Rautji reached out about a year later, they agreed it was still a good idea and began planning the classes. In April 2023, they offered their first course and it’s been off to the races ever since, with the monthly classes regularly selling out.
Prior to reading that cheese book, Doebereiner admits manchego, a semi-hard Spanish goat’s cheese that’s fairly easy to find, was the fanciest cheese she’d ever tasted. Today, she and her customers might enjoy Edel de Cléron, a soft-ripened cheese made from pasteurized cow’s milk and wrapped in spruce bark, alongside black lemon gouda and midnight moon, a Gouda-style goat cheese with a long caramel finish and a slight (and delightful) crunch from tyrosine crystals.
“I feel like this is truly what I was meant to do,” she says of her ongoing journey in cheese. “It wasn’t easy, but the right things have fallen into place at the right times.”
Rautji similarly considers her “5-to-9” job as a wine educator — she still works full time as a biomedical engineer and scientist — her passion. It’s also her mission as a food-and-wine blogger who has tasted hundreds of wines from across the globe over the last decade, often with husband of eight years, Tony Mosesso, at her side.
The so-called “rules of wine” can be intimidating, she said, especially with today’s more global cuisine, where dinner just might include an Iranian pilaf, British gravy, Indian curry or other global foods that aren’t traditionally paired with wine.
“It felt so restrictive and boring,” she says. “I need to make wine about everybody –—people who travel a lot and have expanded palates, and also those who have a freezer meal from Trader Joe’s and just want to pair with that.”
Nosh & Curd’s anniversary wine and cheese tasting class with The Indian Somm is from 6:15-8:30 p.m. April 18, and costs $130. More info: noshandcurd.com or theindiansomm.com.