Wine with Chocolate?!

 
Wine expert Anita LaRaia gives the thumbs up in her new book, Pick a Perfect Wine in No Time.

Chocolate and wine make great partners, and they have a lot in common. Chocolates are influenced and priced by terroir, (or, where the chocolate beans were grown), just like wine. Some chocolates even have names that sound like wines, such as Cote d'Or (meaning hillside of gold), which in the wine world is the greatest district in Burgundy, France; or Weiss Grande Noir (or “great dark”) semi-sweet chocolate. And, like great wine, great chocolate can be quite expensive. In New York City chocolate emporiums, the most elite chocolates cost hundreds of dollars per pound.

Different types of chocolate work best with different wines:

* Milk chocolate has a creamier texture, more dairy, and lower cacao content than other types of chocolate. Cacao is the name of the tree that produces the cocoa beans and their true chocolate component that has the desirable antioxidants and mood lifting theobromine (the theo part of which means “from God”). Milk chocolate partners best with slightly sweet white or red sparkling wines, such as Asti Spumante or Brachetto, a very unusual sweet red sparkling wine—both from Italy. Also terrific with milk chocolate is bargain-priced semi-secco (slightly sweet) Cava sparkling wines from Spain. These three are divine with strawberries dipped in milk chocolate.

* If you prefer dry red wines, experiment with semi-sweet chocolate and any dessert such as brownies made with semi-sweet chocolate. Ask your wine store’s wine expert for a red with concentrated fruit in the middle range of the taste, such as Zinfandel, Petite Sirah, Syrah or Shiraz, and Cabernet Sauvignon or Cabernet Franc. The sweetness and cacao content of semi-sweet chocolate is between those of milk chocolate and bittersweet or dark chocolate.

* Bittersweet or dark chocolate—the best are 60 percent to 70 percent cacao and have the lowest amount of carbs (sugar) and fat—are terrific with luscious, sweet red dessert wines, such as Zinfandel Port from California, or Ruby Porto from Portugal. If you are not sure you can take the sweetness of port, then choose a blanc de noir or rosé sparkling wine. Not all of these wines are expensive. I've had Prosecco rosé from Italy that was very reasonable. Even better, was a Spanish Cava sparkling wine from the acclaimed Freixenet (pronounced “fresh-eh-net”) company called Brut de Noirs (retail price about $8). This wine has deep rose-pink color, delicious aroma of strawberry from the black grapes used to make it, and drier style.