Chocolate and Wine: A Few Suggestions

Here at Wine Access, we never seem to be able to drink as much wine as we would like. Aside from Tom Firth (the lucky exception!), most of us rarely get out to dinners to enjoy some great food and wine.

We decided to change that on Friday afternoon with a little chocolate and wine tasting, which we enjoyed with a few editors from Avenue, another publication at RedPoint Media.

We had four delicious selections to taste with a dozen wines. There was a white, milk, dark and dark chocolate with cranberries, all from Donini Chocolate.

White Chocolate

With the white chocolate, we tried four different wines – the Tinhorn Creek 2009 Gewürztraminer, the Dirty Laundry 2009 Riesling, the Highfield 2009 Riesling and the J. Bouchon 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon. On the packaging, it was recommended that we taste the white chocolate with a champagne, gewürztraminer or riesling – we threw the cabernet sauvignon in there as a little experiment.

Overall, the team agreed that a riesling was the best bet for the Donini white chocolate. We found that some sweetness was required in the wine to pair with the chocolate and Claire Biddiscombe, our Editorial Assistant, noted that the acidity of the riesling also made a difference.

Tom Firth, never one to shy away from the camera, let our Web Editor Allison McNeely film him explaining how he felt about the white chocolate and the selected pairings.

Take a look at Tom's video.

Milk Chocolate

For the milk chocolate, we paired it with the Fusion N/V Sparkling Muscat and the Quinta do Noval 2008 Vintage Port.

Most people preferred the sparkling muscat to the vintage port, the sparkling wine added an interesting texture when tasted with the chocolate. Managing Editor Abby Miller said that she preferred the milk chocolate, simply because it was easier to break apart for sharing.

The port was a more controversial selection for the milk chocolate. Tom Firth noted that it was like drinking beer that had just come out of the fermenter, it was a very young port that needed to be aged for 15 years. Howeer, Jaelyn Molyneux, Assistant Editor for Avenue, found that the chocolate took the edge off the port.

Overall, port is actually quite a neat pairing with milk chocolate – try a ruby, tawny, or off-dry white port – but make sure that it’s aged appropriately.

Dark Chocolate

For the dark chocolate, we tried it with the PKNT Gold Shiraz Reserve and the J. Bouchon 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon. Both of these pairings were quite successful.

Avenue intern Sean Young thought that the PKNT and the dark chocolate was “legit,” and Tom Firth thought that the J. Bouchon and the dark chocolate was a “beautiful pairing, nice and lean.” Overall, shiraz and cabernet sauvignon are easy, fail-safe pairings with dark chocolate.

Dark Chocolate with Cranberries

For the final round, we tasted a dark chocolate with cranberries, which was a little trickier to pair and had mixed responses. Some staff members simply didn’t like the cranberries in the chocolate.

We paired the dark chocolate with cranberries with the J. Bouchon 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon and the Casas des Bosque 2008 Pinot Noir. Both wines worked well with the chocolate, but Jaelyn Molyneux would have preferred a simpler chocolate with her pinot noir.

The real MVP of the tasting was the J. Bouchon Cabernet Sauvignon. It worked well with both dark chocolates and the milk chocolate, making it the most versatile of the wines we tasted. Furthermore, it was great on its own.

We hope to keep doing events like these in the office – fun for us and hopefully, some useful wine suggestions for you. Please let us know what you thought in the comments.