An alternate way of sampling wine is with varieties of chocolate. This combination is a matter of taste and one that also pertains to tasting capacity and preferences as to chocolate.
Discussing and demonstrating how to pair wine and chocolate is an ongoing undertaking for Mary Schellhammer who operates her own chocolate making company, Spice Rack Chocolates, based in Fredericksburg, Virginia. She regards herself as a purist on chocolate and its ingredients and specifically avoids having fillings or truffles in what she produces.
Bringing her chocolates and selected wines to the 2011 Virginia Wine Showcase in Chantilly, Virginia, Schellhammer noted that wine, chocolate, and the herbs that go into her line of chocolates are all agricultural. What she makes is all natural and has no artificial flavors, colors, dairy, or gluten.
Avoiding Sugar as Main Chocolate Ingredient
Her objective with wine is to use chocolate where sugar is not the primary ingredient. She favors pure chocolate with raw cane sugar and cocoa butter that is naturally derived in cacao beans and natural vanilla.
As she explained at the Wine Showcase, chocolate is grown in pods with three different types of cacao beans that resemble almonds. The beans are grown in warmer climates such as West Africa and Central America. How long the beans are roasted and their use determines if the chocolate will be American, Belgian, or French.
Different manufacturers can mix coco powder with cocoa butter or vegetable oils and term that as chocolate, Schellhammer said. But in countries such as Belgium, France, and Switzerland, chocolate--by law--must contain cocoa butter. The ingredients of pure chocolate are cocoa liquor produced from cocoa beans that have been roasted, liquefied, dried, and separated from their skins, she added.
Schellhammer ordinarily seeks to combine wine and chocolate with similar flavors although others who pair the two may seek some element of contrast. She developed her own line of chocolates to play on taste buds and, aside from herbs, infuses them with different spices, coffee, and teas.
Creating Chocolates Through Unintentional Combinations
Her experimentation and sometimes accidental pairings brought about some of the chocolates she now makes. Her fondness for herbs resulted in her rosemary mint chocolate when she unintentionally combined the rosemary from herbed chicken she prepared with chocolate frosting.
Schellhammer too has done research on taste buds on the tongue and on herbs and species and responses to them. She attributes reaction to her chocolates not only to their ingredients but also to associations made with the names which include apple-coriander, grapefruit lavender, mango black pepper, and lemon basil.
In addition, it’s a matter of knowing which species become stronger or weaker for a balance in the chocolate when sampled with wine. Schellhammer said some chocolate has upfront flavors while others are more residual.
The effect depends on whether someone is a deeper or more medium taster. A super taster would be people with over 25,000 taste buds in their mouth, Schellhammer explained. This would usually be a person who dislikes vegetables but loves salt and doesn’t like coffee or raw alcohol and often finds food too spicy.
Pairing Chocolates With Selected Wines for Taste
In pairings with chocolate, the wine selected must be perceived as sweeter than the chocolate, she said. Her recommendation is to stay with solid chocolate in the dark range and don’t use chocolate that is too sweet.
In her view, the ideal chocolate would be semisweet that contains anywhere from 50 to 70% cacao. This is the sweetest of the dark chocolates. With tones that are nutty, spicy, or earthy, semisweet dark chocolate has a balanced and less sweet aftertaste than either milk or white chocolate, Schellhammer said.
At the Virginia wine event, she paired a regular Chardonnay and Cabernet Franc with different chocolates seeking to find tastes that can come in waves, first from fruit, then the chocolate, and finishing with the spice. The wine must be able to cut through the chocolate as it coats your mouth, she told attendees.
In one instance, Schellhammer had a tasting of her apple-coriander chocolate with an oak Chardonnay with fruit and acidity on the end. She instructed her audience to first coat their mouth with the wine, and then taste the chocolate. Once the chocolate is completely dissolved, she said to take a sip of wine again.
A delayed reaction from the tongue can occur as the chocolate lingers on the palette long after swallowing.
She also paired a Cab Franc with the lemon basil chocolate which is more of a middle chocolate. This can result in an unusual flavor up front and pure chocolate in the middle as a pallet cleanser and then a residual flavor.
Those who regularly combine wine and chocolate may tend to favor pairing lighter-bodied wines with lighter chocolates and darker, stronger-tasting chocolate with fuller more robust wines. The effect of certain elements in the chocolate can be triggered in combination with specific wines.
Sources:
- Virginia Wine Showcase, February 12-13, 2011, Westfields Marriott Conference Center, Chantilly, Virginia
- "Pairing Chocolate & Wine," The Nibble
- "Wine and Chocolate Pairings," allchocolate.com
John Seidenberg - John Seidenberg has worked on newspapers, newsletters, radio news, and produced specialized news publications as well as freelance ...
