Matching Wine and Chocolate On Valentines Day
By Chris • Jan 14th, 2010 • Category: Wine Gifts, wine and food pairings
Wine and chocolate is a combination that springs readily to mind when thinking about romantic Valentine’s Day meals or a Valentine’s Day gift. It can be tricky to make this combination work however. Chocolate has intense flavours with the sweetness and sometimes bitter sweetness if you choose dark chocolate. It’s a complex tasting experience and given the complexity of a good bottle of wine it can be difficult to match the flavour profiles.
It’s tricky but not impossible and well worth the effort for Valentine’s Day so here are a few tips.
Aim for similarity of flavours. For sweeter, more delicate chocolate with a low cocoa percentage, you need a sweeter wine. Dark chocolate can be matched with a fuller bodied wine so that the bitterness and intense flavours are adequately matched.
A tawny port, a light sweet Riesling or a sparkling wine all work very well with a white chocolate or milk chocolate.
For dark, bittersweet chocolates try a cabernet sauvignon as long as it isn’t oaky or perhaps a spicy shiraz.
Definitely Chocolate specialise in luxury, hand made chocolate gifts. I’m a dark chocolate fan so this is my choice:
It’s the romance collection of 40 premium dark chocolates.
If you’re stuck for gift ideas for Valentines Day, we’ve put together a list of great gift ideas all with a wine theme. Enjoy!
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Filed Under: Wine Gifts, wine and food pairings
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