Pairing Wine with Chocolate

By Roger Morris, Guest Contributor

When I first started seriously drinking wine some years ago, and writing about it, the standard food-matching prohibitions were no salads and no chocolates.  Vinegar-based dressings would kill any wine, we were told, but that was before Caesar salads bearing hunks of chicken, washed down with California Chardonnay, became tout-le-rage.

I’m not sure what the excuse was for not letting wine and chocolate cohabit – perhaps there was fear that a dark truffle might overwhelm a wimpy, but prized red Bordeaux.  But I rather suspect the experts wanted to keep the daring secret to themselves: That it wasn’t an apple that got Adam and Eve tossed from Eden.  Instead, the two were having that “your place or mine” conversation over a handful of Godivas and a glass of tawny Port.

Nowadays, we absolutely love to combine wine and chocolate – and you can do it locally, as there are several Chester County artisan chocolate makers whose truffles will match quite well with local wines.

My personal preference is to have darker, harder, more-concentrated chocolates with red wines that have a lot of tannins.  Indeed, the slightly bitter, dusty wine tannins are generally described as providing a “chocolate” finish to many of these wines.  Cabernets Sauvignons, such as those Eric Miller makes at Chaddsford Winery and Gino Razzi crafts at Penns Woods Winery, go particularly well with these dark sweets.

Softer, creamier chocolate truffles are excellent with rounder, fruitier reds such as the Port-like, fortified Ruby K that Jim Kirkpatrick puts together at Kreutz Creek Vineyards or some of the rounded red blends vinted by David Hoffman at Paradocx Vineyard.  And local Merlots made by a number of producers will match well.

An increasing trend among chocolatiers is to add spices, particularly hot pepper, to their nibblies, which makes them more complex and often tarter on the tongue.  Spicy wines, such as Chaddsford’s Chambourcin or Va La Vineyard’s northern Italian blends – Cedar and Mahogany – make good pairings.

My personal preference is to have darker, harder, more-concentrated chocolates with red wines that have a lot of tannins.

An often overlooked accompaniment with chocolates is sparkling wine.  John Weygandt’s Chardonnay- and Pinot Noir-based sparklers at Stargazers Vineyard, the only local winery that pops corks, work well with the sweeter, creamier truffles, particularly when the chocolates are combined with fruit flavors.

If you don’t want to make your own mix-and-matches, several of the are wineries are having chocolate-and-wine pairing events in the run up to Valentine’s Day, and you can get more information by going online to the Brandywine Valley Wine Trail site.

As far as white wines are concerned, the sugar and savory flavors of chocolate usually are too much for them, even sweeter dessert wines.  But then I might be just be telling you that to keep that as a least one dark secret all to myself.

Roger Morris is a freelance writer and author of The Brandywine Book of Food.