Chocolate & Wine

Holiday season lurks on the horizon, so what better time to dig into pairing chocolate with Port? Both evoke images of light snow falling, family get-togethers, and a slow warmth that slides down your throat, pools into your toes, and meanders back up again to give you a heady delight. To best equip you to ooze into that proverbial puddle in the yummiest way possible, here is some sage advice from Anton Hicks, my new best friend and Managing Partner of Nectar Wine Lounge, a gem of a spot in San Francisco’s Marina district.

Valentine's Day conjures up images of wine, roses, and chocolates. Yet every year young and old lovers alike are disappointed when they try to pair a Valentine's Day wine with chocolate. Either the chocolate overcomes the wine or the wine overcomes the chocolate. In the spirit of the holiday, IntoWine.com asked a panel of wine experts their thoughts on what romantic wine pairs well with Valentine's Day chocolate:

"The perfect bottle for such a sweet occasion is Louis Guntrum's Scheurebe.

“I’ll try the Madeira” I said to the sommelier. After retrieving a new bottle from the back of the wine bar, she poured a glass of the deep red wine and set it down. As I made a motion to begin my first sip, I heard: “wait a second; I have something for you to try.” A small dish was placed in front of me, filled with brownish-black disks. “Its chocolate,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Oh, of course,” I responded, not totally understanding the pair of wine and plain pieces of chocolate. Then, as I tasted the bitterness of the chocolate combined with the smooth sweetness of the Madeira, I began to appreciate the origin of the slight smirk flashed by the sommelier. What a perfect match.

It is a warm night in the month of May. Everything that has come out of the kitchen to your table seems to be shouting at the top of its lungs that it is spring. The baby lettuces with strawberries and marcona almonds, the fava bean raviolis, the hamachi skewers with avocado and pomelo. The gruner veltliner you ordered has paired up famously with these items, and the bottle of frappato that succeeded it has also proven itself an amiable companion to both the pork tenderloin with asparagus and pea tendrils with gnocchi and romesco, and the pan- roasted halibut with arancini in a green garlic sauce.

Wine and chocolate seems like the perfect combination—two beautiful concepts wedded to create gustatory bliss. And it can be that way. The right chocolate paired with the perfect wine can create a near-orgasmic taste experience. But the wrong wine opposite a too-sweet chocolate creates nothing but horror. A bad pairing can turn an otherwise fabulous dessert to tree bark and a rare vintage to battery acid.

So what’s the right choice if you’re standing in BevMo looking for something to pair with milk chocolate bunnies stolen from the kids? How do you choose from a great wine list the best match for the pastry chef’s chocolate decadence?