Right now, most major food and wine publications are preparing their annual wine-and-chocolate article for Valentine's Day.
But it's all a scam. Wine and chocolate do not go together.
I sat in on a tasting once of about 75 different wines and maybe 20 kinds of chocolate. The best we could come up with were a few pairings that didn't suck.
The reason is very simple: Chocolate is sweet. It makes wines that aren't sweet taste sour.
The only way to avoid this is to drink an even sweeter wine -- vin santo, or Port, or something like that. In which case you have to ask yourself, why do you need the chocolate?
I'm going to say this again as the commercial candy fest that commemorates the mob massacre in Chicago gets closer. But I wanted to get this out there before your February issues of food and wine magazines arrive with ludicrous wine and chocolate pairing propaganda.
Drink wine with your sweetie. Clear your palates with a kiss. Then share a chocolate. Or do this in the opposite order.
But don't believe that Merlot, or Cab, or Zin, or any other red wine goes well with chocolate. They do not. And there's no reason they should have to.
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17 comments:
Obviously, you have been pairing the wrong chocolates with the wrong wines.
The pairing is not, as the CIA might say, a slam-dunk, but I've ahd numerous wonderful Zinfandel, Merlot, and even Bordeaux and chocolate pairings.
You've got to go with the upper cacao levels and good fruit/tannin levels in the wine.
I beg to differ: Try a 2004 Chapelle St. Arnoux red with Trader Joe's Carb Free dark chocolate (not a great chocolate, btw). Perhaps it's the fact that there is no real sugar in the chocolate but, this wine is by no means sweet, but when paired with the TJ's CF chocolate the wine blooms with richness.
agree with the two previous comments. YOu need to have at least a 50% cacao level for any reasonable pairings to work. Once you get to about 65% a good tannic Cabernet will work quite well.
The manufacturing process for the process also makes a difference as well. All the Hersheys products even the new high cacao level once have too much wax and therefore mess with the pairing. Try some off the nib products and a zinfandel, works kind of like beer and pretzels, keeps making you want to drink more.
There is such a wide variety of high end chocolate to pair with good wine, that yes there are quite a lot of pairings that will go horribly wrong, but there are also quite a few that matches that you will never forget.
Try Oloroso or PX sherry. They can handle chocolate...
Having had more bottles of 1983 Margaux ruined because someone read somewhere that it was the perfect wine to accompany chocolate, for the longest time I was solidly in your camp WRT wine and chocolate not going together. However, my come to Jesus moment occurred one evening when a glass of Pedro Ximénez and a glass of 1977 Maury were paired with some very dark chocolate.
Both were brilliant matches, but they're definitely exceptions to the rule.
better yet how about the simple truth in any wine and food pairing: If you like it, enjoy it.
If you don't then don't eat it.
Taste is subjective.
Personally I hate chocolate with red wine, but 70%cocoa with a nice LBV, well, it doesn't get any better.
Incidentally, you need to do the research before making a definitive statement. Chocolate is not sweet. The added sugar is sweet, and not all chocolate is mostly sugar.
Wow, thanks for all the comments! I'm glad you folks found pairings you enjoyed. But chocolate going well with red wine is a big scam the industry uses in tasting rooms to sell wine. People like chocolate, they like wine -- presto! Easy sale.
Believe me, I've tried many, many permutations. Sometimes the wine is drinkable with chocolate, but I have never had the experience of the wine tasting better with chocolate (as Taster B has, forgive me but I haven't tried that particular combo). This, to me, is what good pairing is all about: the combo tasting better together, not merely being palatable together.
As for snarky Mr. Anonymous, I was happy to assume that few people are having unsweetened raw chocolate with their Cabernet. But since you get off on gotchas, you scored one!
Snarky?
You make a definitive claim that chocolate is sweet and that chocolate does not pair with red wine, which is patently false.
Your obvious lack of knowledge shines through your opinion.
Go out and buy a Maury or a Banyuls and some good chocolate. If that doesn't work for you, then we'll just have to say your particular palate is not in line with others. While those wines are specific for chocolate, there are hundreds of regular red wines that work with chocolate for a variety of chemical and textual reasons.
I do have to wonder: if wineries pair chocolate with red wine at the tasting room in order to sell the wine, how could they sell the wine if the pairing is as disastrous as you claim?
One more thing in your last post needs to be addressed:
a wine and food pairing shouldn't have to make each in the pairing taste better. A good pairing creates a new taste experience, separate from the taste experience of each element--and hopefully a pleasant one at that.
"Better" implies that one or the other wasn't so great to begin with--plus, "better" is a subjective opinion.
Sorry anonymous, only one "gotcha" point. No doubles for repeating yourself.
Tasting rooms use chocolate to sell wine effectively because few people are tasting well on the average visit. They might taste well on the first couple wines on the first visit of the day, but few non-professional consumers spit rather than swallow. Thus the average consumer is intoxicated and cheerful. Stick a piece of chocolate in their mouth and they're putty in your hands.
I'm not going to get into the semantics of what makes a great pairing -- or any semantics at all. You're purposely missing my point.
You seem to have some vested interest in this; care to tell us where you work?
"You seem to have some vested interest in this; care to tell us where you work?"
If you are wondering, I sell no wine (and no chocolate either). Just trying to have a conversation about your strident claim: "It's all a scam. Wine and chocolate do not go together," which is of course only your opinion.
I have no idea who you are and so I posted as "anonymous" since that's how you seemed to like things.
Now I see that you have taken steps to prevent me from posting as such. Would love for you to identify yourself. If you choose not to, I won't bother you anymore by posting information rather than opinion.
Good one, Thomas. I've read your book.
I do currently work in selling wine, so I have to be anonymous here so I don't irritate people I work with who use chocolate to sell red wine to uncritical consumers. But I know what people say in private.
I'd love to have this conversation with you, but not over semantics. Who eats unsweetened chocolate? If you want to talk about the real issue involved, let's do it.
Re Maury or Banyuls: OK, but those are sweet wines (personally I'm not a fan, but that is just my opinion.) I believe I mentioned from the beginning that you need a wine that's sweeter than the chocolate, which begs the question of why you need the chocolate at all.
Are you going to tell me that Merlot, Cab and/or Zinfandel go with chocolate, as so many wineries and PR agencies are doing this time of year?
Yes, I'm going to tell you that there are Zinfandel, Merlot, and Cabernet wines that pair with certain chocolates. I can say that because I have had the experience.
Oh, and I eat 90% cacao chocolate regularly--with wine, of course, in my cappuccino and as a snack--but I'm a tannin and acid freak!
If you've read my books you know that I've been around the wine world for a couple of decades. I don't know much about many things, but I know that over the years, many of my opinions have been challenged and proved mistaken. That's what experience does to people and their belief systems, or it should.
One major thing that I've learned is that an opinion without a fact or two to give it basis, remains merely an opinion. Information is based on facts. With wine and chocolate, there are certain facts that validate the potential for a pairing. A blanket dismissal is a mistaken opinion.
If you want to talk further, you have my contact information. This has to be my last post, because I really would like to know to whom I am talking.
Thomas: Thanks for your postings. I won't ask you to go further. We have spoken before and probably will again.
I respect your experience, but I'm not a novice either. I'm trying to give consumers who are not as experienced as either of us some information they need to counteract the upcoming hype of Valentine's Day.
You can stand on the argument that some chocolate/wine pairings work under some exact sets of circumstances, but you're doing readers no more good than people who say you can lose weight by burning calories doing household chores. Technically you might be right, but you're missing the bigger picture, and people are going to misinterpret your stance.
I have tasted red wine with chocolate enough times to know that more than 99% of red wines are much better without chocolate than with it. If you think that's not a high enough percentage for a blanket statement, then we'll never come to an agreement.
But I do sincerely thank your for visiting my blog and leaving your comments. Debates are a good thing.
Who eats unsweetened chocolate?
Me.
Well, not quite unsweetened: my favorite is 99% cacao Lindt, aka 'weapons-grade chocolate', but it's close enough to dry to count. It still has chocolate mouthfeel, but puts forth a lot more tannin, acid and umami than cheap, sweet chocolate (I'm Canadian, and we pooh-pooh the horrible chocolate most Americans are subjected to).
It pairs like a drier or more well-done cut of meat would with red wine: it'll kick light and fruity around, but it can enhance a big, tannic dry red quite nicely.
A recent success with it was a Nickel & Nickel 2000 Dragonfly Vineyard Cab. It took a fairly acidic intensely tannic red and smoothed it out, revealing some very nice notes of currant-leaf that I hadn't perceived initially.
If you have the opportunity to taste a proper form of chocolate with an appropriate wine it can be quite the experience.
But while I'm concerned that the tar on your brush reached a little too far, I agree that giving slightly inebriated hicks on a tasting binge a chunk of chocolate and a glass of industrial red is pretty unhelpful.
You're absolutely right. Wine and chocolate do not pair well together. Some people obviously disagree; God Bless them, they're certainly entitled to their opinions. It's all a big scam foisted on us every year in February. Drink a nice red with your meal, drink an expresso with choclate for dessert.
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