- Wine Army
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
How to Pair Wine with Chocolate Like a Pro
Some say it can’t be done. Some say you shouldn’t even try. However, wine and chocolate are a wonderful food and wine pairing, and no one can stop you from trying it. Perhaps you’ll even enjoy it.
Seriously, wine is a wonderful beverage precisely because it goes well with all kinds of food. Pairings don’t just make the wine and food taste better; they make dinner more enjoyable in general. So, wine and chocolate, can it be done? Here’s how to pair wine and chocolate like a pro.
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Why Wine and Chocolate Work Together
Not everyone agrees that wine and chocolate are meant to be enjoyed together, and they’re not entirely wrong. Usually, the best food and wine pairings are between foods and wines that evolve together over time, often over centuries, like beef stew and Burgundy.
Although wine has been around in Europe for thousands of years and at least three centuries in the New World, chocolate as we know it today only became available in the late 1800s, when Swiss chocolate maker Rodolphe Lindt invented solid conched chocolate. Wine is old, chocolate still relatively new.
However, there is proof that wine and chocolate go well together, and you have probably already tried it. Chocolate pralines, chocolate-covered cherries and various liqueur-infused chocolates have existed for a while, and they’re among everyone’s favorite one-biters. These treats are delicious precisely because they combine chocolate with flavors of cherries and berries, and sometimes booze. Well, guess what else is boozy and berry flavored: red wine.
Should You Start with Chocolate or Wine?
With all pairings you have two parts to consider: the food and the wine. So, do you choose the right food for the wine or the other way around? It depends.
Most of the time, you want either the wine or the food to take the spotlight; the other part becomes a supporting actor. There are many occasions, like most wine dinners and restaurant meals, when you want the food to shine, and you only need the wine to play a secondary role. However, there are other occasions where the wine is the star of the show, like in wine-pairing dinners and wine tastings.
This matters because choosing the right wine inevitably means deciding which one should take the spotlight. For chocolate pairings, though, you might consider a more balanced approach and look for combinations that don’t clash and, ideally, are delicious by complementing and contrasting both elements. To achieve this, let’s focus on the three main chocolate types and the wines that go well with them
The Best Wines for Dark Chocolate
Dark chocolate is unique because it is bitter, sometimes grippingly bitter. The higher the percentage of cacao beans, the more bitter the chocolate, but also the more tannic it becomes.
Tannins are plant-based molecules present in both dark chocolate and red wine. They cause a drying sensation in the mouth that is more of a texture than a flavor. And because red wine and dark chocolate share this trait, they are naturally compatible.
Put another way, dark chocolate will overwhelm medium-bodied red wines with low tannins. Therefore, only full-bodied reds with high tannins, like those made with Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah or Tempranillo, can compete in intensity with dark chocolate.
What to expect? Tannic wines will make the bitter chocolate taste less bitter and rounder. At the same time, chocolate might make the robust wine taste softer. Because these wines are generally dry, and dark chocolate is at least slightly sweet, the pairing will also make the chocolate taste sweeter than it is.
Pairing Wine with Milk Chocolate
Milk chocolate is sweet but not overly sweet; it is creamy and smooth, and it doesn’t have the bitterness or grip of dark chocolate.
This means that we can confidently pair it with medium-bodied red wines with fewer tannins, such as Merlot and Malbec. What to expect?
Here, we’re playing with a complementary pairing between a dry wine with medium tannins that smells sweet and sweet milk chocolate with little to no bitterness. Ideally, the wine’s tannins will tame the chocolate’s sweetness, while the chocolate will make the wine taste even more structured.
What About White Chocolate?
White chocolate is not actually chocolate, as it doesn’t contain cocoa beans. Instead, it is made of cocoa butter, sugar, and milk solids. We still love it, though, and it deserves its own wine pairing.
Milk, fat and sugar sound a lot like other sweet treats like custards, pastry cream, cream pies, and ice cream. Therefore, we can treat milk chocolate as such, a rich, creamy, milk-based dessert. Thinking about milk chocolate this way makes it easier to see which wines pair well with it.
Chardonnay sometimes literally smells like custard, butter and vanilla. However, it is also almost always dry, and we want our dessert wine to be at least slightly sweet. There are exceptions, though, and they are glorious when paired with white chocolate: Late harvest Chardonnay is a match made in heaven, and so is chardonnay-based sweet sparkling wine, such as Sec and Demi-Sec Champagne and the likes.
Other wines that pair well with white chocolate are sweet Riesling and Chenin Blanc, and 3 dessert white wine specialties, such as Ice Wine, Sauternes and Tokaji.
Sweet Chocolate Needs a Sweet Wine
The sweeter the chocolate, the harder it is to pair with wine, because today, most wine is dry. Dessert wine is a relatively small niche. For incredibly sweet chocolates, you need incredibly sweet wine. And this goes for all dessert pairings. So, what are the sweetest wines out there?
For overly sweet desserts and chocolate, bring out the big guns. Fortified wine. This type of wine is ancient, and it is made in a particular way to preserve most of the grape's sweetness intact, generally by not allowing fermentation to consume all of the sugar.
Winemakers literally stop fermentation by adding a splash of grape spirit, resulting in super-sweet and highly alcoholic wines—the perfect after-dinner drink (that also happens to pair beautifully with dessert). Examples include Port from Portugal, Sherry from Spain (the sweet styles, like PX) and Sicilian Marsala.
A Match Made in Heaven
Yes, wine and chocolate are delicious on their own. Both have immense fan bases. Well, when two greats come together, magic happens, so let’s make that collab happen! Try your favorite chocolates with different wines and find the combinations you enjoy most.
To make it even more interesting, call some people over and see what they have to say about your wine and chocolate pairings. Wine and chocolate not only go well together; they were born to share a table. Just remember, food and wine pairings are, in part, subjective, so don’t be too serious about them. Happy pairings!
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