Four Chocolate and Wine Pairing Suggestions
May 24, 2018
There was a time when pairing chocolate and wine was relatively easy. Chocolate was simply chocolate. It was sweet, little was added to it outside of nuts and any red wine would do. Likewise, the wine industry wasn’t interested in making anything more interesting than Merlot.
Given the changes in both industries, here’s a new age wine pairing suggestion for some of your favorite chocolates here at Chocolate University online.
While my natural inclination is to default to a simple suggestion that people should simply drink what they like, while eating what they like, pairing wine and chocolate together well can simply increase your enjoyment of both. To that end, here’s a handful of wine and chocolate pairing suggestions:
Wild Huckleberry Dark Chocolate Sea Salt: Huckleberries are the state berry of Idaho, and I’ve run into huckleberry pie while in Walla Walla (Washington State wine country, about 40 miles from the Idaho border). I remember that flavor of these being rather tart, almost like the unripe blueberry that they resemble when picked. Combined with the higher percentages of cacao in dark chocolate, you’re going to want a darker and more brooding wine. Something with some level of sweetness won’t overpower your palate. Port is a great pairing.
White Chocolate Tidbits: Ok, so I know….white chocolate isn’t exactly chocolate. It doesn’t have the cacao. But, no one in their right mind is going to ignore a $17.5 Billion market. The good thing about white chocolate when it comes to wine pairings, is that it opens itself up to an entirely new range of suggestions. Finally, I can suggest a pairing with Pinot Noir! Pinot pairs well with white chocolate because the sweetness of the chocolate brings out the natural strawberry flavors and acidity in most well made Pinot Noir. In fact, some of the only places I’ve ever seen white chocolate bites on the counter-top of a winery have happened in Oregon’s Willamette Valley.
Mint Dark Chocolate: The mint tends to offer a bit of a herbal element to your chocolate, which we don’t want to overly accentuate. While Cabernet Sauvignon could work well here, Syrah is a more natural pairing because the grape has an unseen sweetness to it when made correctly.
Cinnamon Truffles: If we were talking about standard fungi truffles, I would recommend a Barolo (an excellent Italian wine), even though it's too specific a wine for most American households to find. However, we're not talking about mushrooms here. We're talking about chocolate with a ganache filling. And pairing this with wine brings up an important point: there’s a lot of conventional wisdom that’s being destroyed on a daily basis as the chocolate business and the wine business both evolve.
Based on the sweetness of most chocolate truffles, you’re likely going to be told that you should be looking for a sweeter wine. That’s true in any number respects, but given what I see on a daily basis, in tasting rooms and in my own home, this is where Cabernet Sauvignon shines.
In many ways Cabernet has become the backbone of the international wine trade because people just love the stuff. Ask any waiter and they’ll tell you, Cabernet Sauvignon gets ordered with every dish on the menu. From steak (its classic pairing) to chicken, people will pair it with anything and everything.
For this cinnamon truffle, I’ll simply say that any Cabernet with a touch of residual sugar will work nicely. The Prisoner is a major, distributed wine label that has some residual sugar and would be a fit here. But really, this suggestion is perhaps the most basic: if you like a specific wine and you like this truffle, I bet you’ll like them together. At a minimum, you should try them together and find out!
Lastly, there’s one pairing which seemingly works well for almost all food and chocolate. Sparkling wine. Not only Champagne, but Cava, Prosecco, and American made sparklers. As long as they’re light, sweet or slightly sweet, they’ll bring out the natural sweetness and flavor of your chocolate. In much of Europe, a bit of chocolate and Champagne is a standard happy hour appetizer as well as an after dinner drink. In America, we’re just getting there now.
Want More Chocolate & Wine?
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- Four Chocolate and Wine Pairing Suggestions - May 24, 2018