Wine+Chocolate=Amour, Cocotte & Passionner
Naysayers moan that it cannot be done, pairing wine with chocolate. Dispense with the haters. The truth is that if you have the right wine to complement the right chocolate it can be a pairing created in heaven! Whether you are pairing a delicate white chocolate or a lively dark chocolate with wine, it shouldn’t matter but there are a few pairing tips to keep in mind, particularly when dealing with something this explosively sexy.
Important safety tip #1, Hopefully the wine you’ve chosen is at least sweet, if not a tad sweeter, than the chocolate you are serving it with. Otherwise, you run the risk that the taste may quickly veer towards bitter or sour. Uh, oh.
When pairing wines with chocolate, your best bet is to match lighter, more elegant flavored chocolates with lighter-bodied wines; likewise, the stronger the chocolate, the more full-bodied the wine should be. For example, a bittersweet chocolate tends to pair well with an intense, in-your-face Chilean Cabernet…bordering on our own Sacre Bleu product endorsement here.
Similar to “formal” wine tasting, if you will be experimenting with several varieties of chocolates, work from light to dark. Start with a more subtle white chocolate and end on a dark or bittersweet chocolate.
If you are looking for an easy and inexpensive, Do-it-Yourself way to experiment with wine and chocolate pairings, simply picking up a few bars of Green and Black’s premium chocolate is a good way to start. By taking a “mix and match” approach to finding your own personal palate preferences when it comes to pairing wine and chocolate, you’ll gain “hands-on” knowledge of which wines really complement which chocolate combinations. By opening eight bars of Green & Black’s chocolate along with a few bottles of wine we were able to take each chocolate through a series of wine pairings to see which combinations rose to the top. This is just a starting point, the combinations could be almost unlimited when you start to shake up not only varietals, but vintages and producers with the more than a few chocolate bars made by someone as talented as Colin Gasko.
We love what WineChannelTV did on the subject in their interview with Bill Nesto. Jess brings it home nicely here.
