340693 Tue Nov 07 17:11:14 -0800 2006 2 1 San Francisco Bay Area 0 2003313 For anyone who likes chocolate and likes wine... I recently went to a fantastic tasting/class one evening at the Ferry Building: Introduction to Chocolate & Wine Pairing, taught by Michael Recchiuti of Recchiuti Confections and Peter Granoff of the Ferry Plaza Wine Merchants. They say they'll offer it again in 2007, so I thought I'd write it up. The premise of the class was essentially that, contrary to popular belief, cabernet does NOT go well with chocolate, but many wines do. The class explored with detailed tastings what wines work with different kinds of chocolates and why. The class began with each student sitting down at a labeled tasting mat of about half a pound of Michael Recchiuti chocolates (!) and 6 glasses of wine. Each wine was paired with several chocolates to try, some of which worked well and some of which didn't. The mix of successful and unsuccessful pairings was really useful. The wines included a cabernet sauvignon, a sweet muscat, a ruby port, a tawny port, a late harvest zinfandel, and a cream sherry. All were very nice wines. Actually, there were 7 wines, if you count the glass of sparkling wine each student was given to start the evening off! There were 13 different varieties of chocolates, both dark and milk (or rather 12 varieties of chocolates and one pate de fruit), representing a range of flavors: straight chocolate, herbals, teas, nuts, fruits, and spices. I discovered a number of really interesting things in the class. I won't write up all of them because I'd hate to spoil the fun for anyone who takes the class in the future, but here's a, well... taste. 1- Rule #1: When pairing a wine with any dessert, it's important that the dessert NOT be sweeter than the wine. If the dessert is sweeter, the wine is stripped of a lot of its flavor. That's why cabernet doesn't really work well with chocolate. 2- You can pair chocolates with a sweet wine in such a way that the chocolates actually subdue some of the sweetness of the wine without subduing its flavor, making the wines actually nicer to drink. This was the case, I thought, particularly with several chocolates paired with the cream sherry and the tawny port. Interestingly, there was no pattern based on acidity of the chocolates: the tarragon-grapefruit dark ganache created this effect, as did the Piedmont hazelnut gianduja in milk chocolate. 3- Some wines brought out subtle flavors in the chocolates or visa versa. The cream sherry, for example, really brought forward a flavor I'd never noticed before in the bergamot tea ganache: sweet black tea. That was cool. And the tarragon grapefruit ganache brought out some citrus in the cream sherry, which was very pleasant. 4- Often, a similar flavor in a wine and a chocolate complemented each other, but sometimes this wasn't the case. For instance, I thought that the chocolate-covered candied orange peel worked beautifully with the muscat canelli, which also had a delicate orange flavor, and the Kona ganache worked really well with the tawny port, which had its own coffee notes. By contrast, the nuttiness of the peanut butter puck (MR's version of a Peanut Butter Cup) and the cream sherry didn't work well together: the peanut butter puck instead brought out unpleasant bitter notes in the cream sherry. Peter Granoff noted that sometimes similar flavor profiles cancel each other out. 5- Another issue to consider in the pairings is that the intensities of the flavors be compatible. There were a lot of cases in which a chocolate simply drowned out the flavors (or the good flavors) of the wines or visa versa. 6- I'm sure not every taster would agree, but in general the wines I felt went best with the most chocolates were the muscat canelli and the cream sherry (which was, incidentally, a Lustau East India Rare Cream Sherry). And my favorite pairing of all was the Piedmont Hazelnut gianduja chocolate with the tawny port. And in case you're thinking that half a pound of chocolate might be an awful lot to consume in just a couple of hours, don't worry! Most people just took a bite or two of each chocolate and then packed up the rest to bring home at the end of the class. Also, water and bread were provided to cleanse the palate, as well as cheese, so no one was consuming so much chocolate and wine on an empty stomach. All in all, I recommend the class for sheer fun and deliciousness, not to mention the educational value. In case anyone is interested in taking it next time, it was offered by the Ferry Plaza Wine Merchants and they said they'll probably offer another one next quarter. Their Web site contains a list of classes. http://www.fpwm.com/group_events/education.html Tue Nov 07 17:11:14 -0800 2006 51640 asloo 1 2003606 Thank you for a spectacular first posting! A few years ago I took part in a chocolate and Sonoma County wine tasting led by John Ash. This was when Scharffen Berger was brand new and we found that the sample of bittersweet chocolate was the only one that was palatable with dry red wines. P.S. I'd been wondering if you were the other half of the Sloo chow duo. I appreciate your mentioning it in the Back A Yard post and answering my question! Tue Nov 07 18:32:15 -0800 2006 2003313 10039 Melanie Wong 1 2004098 sounds like a good time. thanks for the very informative posting. Tue Nov 07 20:54:28 -0800 2006 2003313 19880 wchane