Champagne Grapes with Gorgonzola and Walnuts
Tiny champagne grapes with creamy Gorgonzola and candied walnuts on picks — one of the world's oldest blue cheeses, first documented in Lombardy in 879 AD, paired with two of the most ancient table foods in European culinary history.
- 2 cupschampagne grapes(or small red grapes)
- 6 ozGorgonzola dolce(cut into small cubes)
- 1 cupcandied walnuts
- 24decorative picks or small skewers
- 2 tbsphoney(for drizzling)
- 1 tspfresh thyme leaves
Can be assembled up to 2 hours ahead; refrigerate loosely covered. Drizzle with honey just before serving.
- 1Wash grapes and dry thoroughly
- 2Cut Gorgonzola into bite-sized cubes
- 3Thread onto picks: 2-3 grapes, 1 cheese cube, 1 walnut
- 4Arrange picks on serving platter
- 5Drizzle lightly with honey
- 6Scatter thyme leaves over platter
- 7Serve immediately or refrigerate up to 2 hours
If champagne grapes aren't available, use the smallest seedless red grapes you can find. Gorgonzola dolce is creamier and milder than aged Gorgonzola. Room temperature cheese has better flavor, but firm, cold cheese is easier to work with. Roquefort or Stilton are excellent substitutes.
Gorgonzola is among the oldest blue cheeses in the world, and its documented history begins in 879 AD with its first written mention — one of the earliest written records of any specific European cheese. Wikipedia places its creation in the Middle Ages between 879 and 1007 AD in Lombardy, northern Italy, in the town of Gorgonzola near Milan that gives the cheese its name. The origin legend, repeated across multiple sources, involves a cheesemaker who left fresh curds unattended overnight in a damp cellar — distracted, according to some versions, by romantic pursuits — and on returning, added fresh morning curds to the previous batch. When mould developed in the combined curd, he tasted it and found the flavour remarkable. Wikipedia identifies this as "the first discovery of the process of erborinatura" — the Italian term for the deliberate development of blue-green mould in cheese. The name Gorgonzola itself grew from the place where transhumant Alpine herders stopped during their autumn descent from mountain pastures, milking their exhausted cattle and making cheese from the milk. The Lombard word for those tired cows was stracche — which is why the cheese was known as stracchino di Gorgonzola, or "green stracchino," until the early 20th century. Commercial production expanded significantly from the mid-19th century; by 1860, industrial-scale production was underway. In 1955 Gorgonzola received DOC protection in its dolce (younger, milder) and piccante (aged, sharper) forms, and in 1996 the European Union registered it as a Protected Designation of Origin — today legally produced only in specific provinces of Lombardy and Piedmont. The walnuts alongside it carry an equally deep history: archaeological evidence dates walnut consumption in Europe to approximately 7,000 BCE, making this a pairing of two of antiquity's oldest plant foods.