If a box of chocolates is your gift choice for that someone special this Valentine’s Day, put some adventure into it and pair it with a bottle of fruit wine. Just be the sure it’s the right wine.
Ideally you should choose a wine that is sweeter than the chocolate, otherwise the wine will taste bitter by comparison.
No matter what kind of chocolate you’ve got, there is also richness which comes from high alcohol.
It is suggested that taking a piece of dark chocolate which is high in cacao content (70 to 90 per cent) and pairing it with a nice fortified blackberry wine or some other port style wine would work wonders.
The fruit wine to pair with chocolate should be full bodied, aromatic and very flavourful. A light, dry fruit wine will not work as well.
A desert of fruit and chocolate such as strawberry sauce on chocolate cake would go very well with a sweet strawberry wine or even a fortified raspberry wine.
Mid-range dark chocolate matches well with a plummy sweet wine such as plum wines, or the Japanese Ume Shu.
Here are my top 12 fruit wine and chocolate matches:
-Dark chocolate and Black Currant Port
-Chocolate-covered biscotti and sweet plum wine.
-Chocolate-Orange cake and sweet orange wine.
-Chocolate with nuts and fortified and oak aged blackberry port
-Milk chocolate and sweet raspberry wine
-Bittersweet chocolate and fortified cherry wine
-Chocolate-dipped fruit and apple ice wine
-Chocolate Fondue and fortified Saskatoon berry wine
-Chocolate Ganache Truffles and sweet pear wine
-Chocolate Cheese Cake and passion fruit wine
-Chocolate raspberry cheesecake and (or course) fortified raspberry wine
-Chocolate hearts with cream filling and sweet peach wine
Natalie MacLean, author of the popular book Red, White and Drunk All Over, calls wine “liquid sensuality and when you pair it with the mouth-coating luxury of chocolate, the combination is impossible to resist.” I must say that I fully agree with that insightful statement.
Pairing the right fruit wine with the proper chocolate is a sure way to score many points for “romantically challenged” guys out there. Not every winemaker can be romantic but I hope this will at least help!
Happy Valentine’s 😉
(some of the text and info used in this blog post was borrowed from a great article by Judy Creighton of the Kingston Whig Standard.)