With Valentine’s Day only a few short days away, this week the Ideal Wine Company wanted to get in the spirit by sharing five rules for pairing wine with chocolate.
Give Your Partner the Perfect Valentine’s Day
The perfect tipple for a romantic get together, you need to invest in a bottle of your partner’s favourite vintage if you want to give them a Valentine’s Day they’ll remember for the rest of their lives.
Yet if you really want to impress them with your romance skills, the Ideal Wine Company would suggest you go one step further to give them the perfect Valentine’s Day. Pair it with that other staple of Valentine’s romance, chocolate. Chocolate can act as the perfect complement to wine when matched correctly, as these two aphrodisiacs act to enhance each other’s flavour.
Five Guidelines for Pairing Wine with Chocolate
As such if you’re thinking about serving wine and chocolate to your partner this 14th February, abide by the following five guidelines to make sure you pick the right pairing…
- Pick a Sweeter Wine: Ensure you pick a wine that’s sweeter than your chocolate and you won’t go far wrong. Pick a chocolate that’s sweeter than your wine and the tastes could clash, resulting in an unpleasant pairing.
- Pair by Intensity: This isn’t a case of opposites attract. Pair lighter chocolates with lighter wines and darker chocolates with darker red wines to achieve the perfect compliment.
- Choose an Acidic Wine: Whatever chocolate you pick you always need to pair it with an acidic wine. This is because chocolate tends to coat your mouth when you eat it so you need an acidic vintage to cut through the chocolate coating.
- Match the Smoothness: Texture is vital to making an effective wine and chocolate pairing. Match your vintage and your chocolate by smoothness if you want to ensure you achieve the complementary textures you need to make this combination work.
- Buy Quality: Chocolate can prove every bit as complex as any luxury vintage gracing the top shelf of your living room. Buy sub-standard chocolate and you could pair it with the best wine in the world, it’d still leave you with a bad taste in your mouth. Buy quality to ensure an effective wine and chocolate combo.
Choose the Right Chocolate for the Right Wine
These guidelines are a good place to start. Wine and chocolate can give you everything you need to set the mood for a night of romance this Valentine’s Day, as long as you choose the right chocolate for the right wine.
