Along with an abundance of wine, chocolate is one of the great distractions at Wine Brothers HQ. Wine and chocolate have a lot of similarities to each other. For one, they’re both considered aphrodisiacs and they both contain flavanols (antioxidants) - in lamens terms, that means they are good for us. We are off to cracking start here.... 

Despite these striking similarities, it’s somewhat challenging to pair wine and chocolate together. For example, if you taste a delicious glass of dry red wine alongside a hunk of dark chocolate, the wine will start to taste bitter and sour. The taste imbalance is coming from the heightened levels of flavanols (different types of tannin) found in both chocolate and wine that end up clashing against each other on your tongue. Booooo. 

Fortunately, there several wines that make great pairings with chocolate and they are amazing! Here are many wine and chocolate pairings–along with why they work–so you can experiment and create your own.  

Let's take you on a journey of discovery as we make two of the greatest things in the world even better. Possible. Very Possible. Thank us later. 

Milk Chocolate

A good milk chocolate is usually about half chocolate and half cream–like those amazing ganache chocolate truffles dusted in cocoa powder. The extra fat from the cream makes milk chocolate one of the easiest “true” chocolates to pair with wine.

Recommended Wines with Milk Chocolate:

• Late-Harvest Red Wines: Port style wines including late-harvest Syrah, Pinot Noir and Petite Sirah.
• Ruby Port: The original Port from Portugal makes for a more spiced and berry driven pairing with milk chocolate
• Rutherglen Muscat: This elixir is perhaps the sweetest of the sweet wines in the world and it comes from Victoria, Australia. This is the most exciting for us at Wine Brothers as we will be introducing Hong Kong to some of Rutherglen's finest in Q3 this year. Watch this space...

Dark Chocolate

The polyphenols in dark chocolate mirror those in wine and give both a somewhat bitter taste. It’s also the part of the chocolate that gives you all the health benefits! The bitterness in dark chocolate is what we’ll want to balance out with a properly selected wine pairing.

Recommended Wines with Dark Chocolate:

• Vin Santo del Chianti: or Vin Santo Occhio di Pernice has rich, sweet flavours of cherries, cinnamon, and a fine nuttiness.
• Port-style Red Wines: There are several single-varietal Port-style wines (coming from outside of Portugal) that have ample intensity to balance dark chocolate, including Zinfandel (with cayenne chocolate), Malbec (with ginger chocolate) and Petite Sirah (with coffee chocolate).
• Port: The original Port from Portugal often has touches of cinnamon spice to the taste profile and pairs marvelously with chocolates with high cacao percentages.

White Chocolate

White chocolate isn’t technically a “true” chocolate because it doesn’t contain cacao (the brown part with all the flavanols), but it ends up being one of the few chocolate-like sweets that will match with dry red wine! Woohoo!

Recommended Wines with White Chocolate:

• Pinot Noir: A shockingly good pairing, especially for chocolate and wine pairing disbelievers. The white chocolate acts as the fat that delivers sweet flavours of red cherries, strawberries, and raspberries found in the Pinot Noir. 
• Rosé Port: This is the newest style of Port and offers rich flavours of sweet strawberries and current. The minerality in this Port carries through, making it a sophisticated sweet match.

Pairing with Flavoured Chocolates Nuts, Caramel, Fruit, Ginger, and Beyond

Since chocolate isn’t always a solo item, here are a few recommended pairings for flavoured chocolates to inspire you:

• Chocolate Covered Strawberries: Some of the sweet sparkling reds, including Sparkling Shiraz, are a great place to start.
• Ginger Dark Chocolate: Orange Muscat does wonders with ginger.
• Peanut Butter Cups: Wines with some sweetness and nuttiness are the secret here, including Madeira, Marsala and Amontillado/Oloroso Sherry.
• Caramel Chocolates: Wines aged with oxidation, including Tawny Port (20 years and over) and Moscatel de Setubal.
• Chocolate Mint: Try a single-varietal Shiraz.

Making Your Own Pairings

The best thing you can do is to start thinking of wine as an ingredient. When you break wine into its basic tastes and subtle characteristics you’ll find affinities to different foods. The goal of a great wine pairing is to balance the tastes (sweet, sour, bitter, salty, etc) in the food and wine so that the subtle flavours can beautifully emerge.