Romancing the senses: Chocolate and Wine
Though they may seem like a perfect match, wine and chocolate don’t always make an ideal couple. As with people, each bottle and every bon bon comes equipped with its own nuances, subtitles and complexities. Finding the right combination can take a few tries, but when it emerges, there is scarcely a more tantalizing romance for the palette and the senses.
Speed Dating – How to find a happy match
As with wine, chocolate should be tasted from light to dark – from sweet to bitter, white to black – so as not to confuse your palette, or give it whiplash from swinging from sweet to bitter and back again.To begin, each wine and each chocolate should be tasted individually, neutralizing your palette in between each tasting. Sense the colors, aromas, and textures of each. Spend some time on the sensations and try to name each one; this will help you articulate what you’ll need to balance out when you put together the pairing.
When you taste the chocolate, hold it in your mouth and let it melt. Move it around a little and let the flavors and feel of it fill your mouth. And before you start to salivate uncontrollably, swallow.
Now try to make a match. Take a bite of chocolate. Spend some time with the experience of it, and just as your palette is coming down from the heights of cacao and sugar, take a sip of wine. What happens? What happens to the flavor of the chocolate, to the flavor of the wine, to the sensations in your mouth. What changes? What emerges and what is masked? Think about the acidity, sweetness, tannic finish, fruitiness, pepperiness, bitterness and nuttiness.
Pairing Principles
As with any pairing, from wine and cheese to wine and French fries, there are a few principles help one navigate how to make 1 and 1 equal two, instead of “...eww.”
Principle number one: maintain the Balance of Power
Think of the wine and the chocolate as two singers in the same choir – one alto, the other soprano. In each characteristic they should represent distinct sides of the spectrum: if the chocolate is semi-sweet or milk chocolate, the wine should be slightly more acidic; if perhaps the chocolate is bitter, the wine should be aromatic and have strong fruit flavors. The voice of one should compliment the other: opposite traits converging to create balance. One high, the other low.
That is not to say that the flavor of one is overpowered by the flavor of the other. Quite the opposite. The alto and soprano voices are distinct and beautiful each in their own right. But an ideal pairing allows them to combine and sing together.
Principle number two: Learn from the Remains
It’s easy to pay attention to the success of a pairing when you’re sitting at a table, staring at the wine like a suspect under interrogation. It’s easy to note subtitles as you swirl a bit of chocolate around in your mouth until it finally disintegrates three minutes later. At a tasting or pairing event, you’re hyper-attentive to your senses: to the way the wine and the chocolate speak to each other. And that’s how it should be.
But what happens when you add a room full of people, and music, and small-talk to the mix? At the end of the evening you’ve likely forgotten what you ate and drank, much less how each element worked together.
And though your memory may be clouded by a million other thoughts, or by a few too many glasses, the proof of the pairing will be staring back at you.
Evidence of the synergy will be on your plate and in your glass: if you hardly touched your wine but ate twenty bon bons, or drank two bottles and only nibbled on a crumb of cacao, then something was rotten in the state of Denmark.
A happy pairing will leave you feeling satisfied and will encourage you to consume each element equally.
Take-away Tips:
- Taste light to dark, sweet to bitter
- The darker the chocolate, the fuller-bodied the wine
- Purchase quality wine and quality chocolate – and don’t allow either to be overpowered by the other!
- Neutralize! It’s important to neutralize both your palette and your nose between each tasting, in order to insure that aromas and flavors don’t linger.
Nibble a plain cracker or sniff pepper corns in between tastings to ensure that you’re not muddling your senses!
If you’re interested in learning more and tasting for yourself, let us know!
We’ll await you in Mendoza with a chocolate pairing and an experience to remember.