Chocolate and Wine

When asked to review of some up-market chocolate from a company really making a name for themselves called Chocolate and Love.com I just just couldn’t wait to get started. 

This online Chocolate Boutique have really done their homework and produced a range of amazing cocolate that really is a cut above the rest.  What caught my eye immediately was that all the ingredients 100% organic, and they contain no preservatives or colouring agents.   All were double wrapped with the inner packaging sealed.

The presentation of the packaging already suggests to me that the chocolate would be equally pleasing and I wasn’t disappointed.  Once opened, the inner sealed wrapper exposed some amazing aromas which immediately aroused my taste buds.  After the rich aroma, breaking the chocolate was the first clue as to the quality.  A clean break without any splinters of chocolate and no sticky fingers it a real indicator of quality chocolate.

Can you see where someone experienced in wine tasting is already going.  I decided to find wines to match these chocolates.

Orange Mantra

This is a chocolate made from 65% cocoa (organic) sourced from Fairtrade co-operatives in Peru and Dominican Republic.

On opening, the Orange Mantra, produced generous citrus aromas continuing onto flavours of sweet oranges that you only experience when biting into freshly picked and fully ripened oranges.  While an Orange Muscat wine from Australia was good, the best match was an Almondvale Muscat Rouge from South Africa.  This was a rich and not overly sweet wine but was the perfect match.  With a hint of red fruits, the sweet aromas and mellow balanced flavours complimented the tones of the Orange Mantra perfectly. 

Avondale Muscat Rouge

Filthy Rich  (Extra dark chocolate)

This is a really dark chocolate with 71% cocoa.  It has rich flavours with a long finish that lasted long after the last morsel had been swallowed.

Slighly less sweet overall than the other chocolates and a dryer finish.

This needed similarly heavy flavours in a wine and this calls for an Australian Shiraz or Cabernet Sauvignon where the sweet tannins in the wine and the red fruit flavours really do compliment the chocolate.

This will be a real winner for lovers of extra dark chocolate.

Crushed Diamonds

This is a really special dark chololate.  Well balanced flavours amd creamy mouthfeel with a sweetish finish and great length of flavour.  Having a minimum of 55% cocoa it also has cocoa nibs giving the chocolate a pleasant crunchy feel in the mouth.

This chocolate needs a similarly complex wine to accompany it. 

Henriques & Henriques (H&H) Single Harvest Medium Rich Madeira 1998 is an absolute delight with this chocolate.  Rich, complex and maderised flavours to compliment the rich  flavours of the chocolate.

The Coffee Affair

Aromas of “real” freshly ground coffee emerged from the newly opened bar of organic dark chocolate with coffee and and lasted till the end.  Coffee lovers will really like this one. 

Similarly powerful flavours are needed to compliment The Coffee Afair.  A wine to sip with this chocolate took a lot of tastings before the right combination was discovered.

This is a dark chocolate with coffee and 55% cocoa   

Argentina is starting to produce some excellent sweet wines and the Malbec Dulce Natural provided the ideal match for The Coffee Affair.

This is a fortified (19.5% abv) late harvest Malbec from the foothills of the Andes.  It’s rich sweet aromas and flavours of of blackberry,  cassis, chocolate and coffee make this the ideal partner for The Coffee Afair

Following the very successful Tweetup Wine Challenge (meeting of local users of Twitter) there seemed to be a thirst for knowledge on wines and a number of requests for me to organise a wine tasting course in West Lothian.  Word has got around fast “on the local grapevine” and the course is already more than half full before it has even been advertised. 
We will cover many aspects of tasting wine such as how to recognise the main components of wine, the main grape varieties, matching food and wine, faults in wine as well as tasting many wines from around the world. 

The focus will be on how to enjoy wine.  By the end of 10 weeks I will have honed your sense of smell and sharpened up your palate so that you can taste wines just like professionals.

Starts on Monday 28 September and there will be a few Wednesday evenings instead of Mondays due to the venue having prior bookings. 

Contact me for further details as soon as possible as this course will fill up fast.  ian@thewine-experience.co.uk

This is certainly a vintage year for The Wine Experience in a number of ways. 

Twitter and the whole social networking scene has introduced me to a large number of valuable contacts and souces of information both worlwide and locally that would have been unthinkable just 2 months ago. 
I am look forward to announcing a lot of exciting consumer and corporate wine events, food and wine events and wine dinners during the second half of 2009.

Let me raise a glass to all those of you who have helped me start off this incredible journey.  Cheers

Ian