Wine does not go with chocolate!

On Thursday, Crushpad in San Francisco is hosting an event to create a red wine that goes with chocolate.

It's an interesting event for Crushpad, a cool business that helps people make their own wine (for thousands of dollars). It's great marketing.

But it's not going to work. Red wine does not go with chocolate.

But ... but ... but ... all the tasting rooms say, "This wine is great with chocolate." And every year for Valentine's Day, magazines do articles about which wines go with chocolate.

Folks, I have sat in on some really long chocolate-wine pairing sessions: dozens of wines, dozens of chocolates. And I'll tell you, red wine and chocolate just doesn't make either one taste better. The chocolate taste gets more abrupt; the wine tastes sour and hotter. Red wine and chocolate are two great tastes that need to be enjoyed separately.

So why are so many people obsessed with it? I blame wine marketers, particularly at tasting rooms. People like the taste of chocolate and don't understand wine. You put chocolate in their mouth and they taste chocolate, and convince themselves the wine helps.

If you really want a wine to go with chocolate, you need something sweet, because sweets (chocolate or any candy) will make a dry wine taste sour. Try vin santo, the Italian dessert wine. I had an Israeli pomegranate wine that was excellent with chocolate. I've had low-alcohol sparkling muscat that was decent with chocolate.

But I'm still mystified by the whole exercise. Finish your wine. Then eat your chocolate. What's wrong with that?