Just as there are few people who do not appreciate the gift of a good bottle of wine, there are also few people who do not appreciate chocolate as a gift. However, would it make sense to combine the two? Chocolate and wine are both gifts loved by many, many people, and though wine typically goes with a meal, with cheese or with a fruity dessert, there are just as many possibilities of wine and chocolate going together if you apply the same principles of taste matching.

Just like a steak should be paired with a strong red wine, chocolate should also be paired with an appropriate taste. It sounds simple perhaps, but there are so many kinds of chocolate; the best gifts incorporating wine and chocolate are ones that carefully pair two complementing tastes with one another.

Delicious Pairings

Successful pairing depends on matching strengths; just like a dry red wine is best paired with a rich steak, a dry red wine should be paired with something that’s equally hearty when it comes to chocolate. A chocolate and wine gift that has a dry red wine should have a very dark chocolate with it in order to get good complementing tastes. A chocolate much heavier in cocoa than in sugar is the only kind of chocolate that is going to stand up to the robust flavor of a dry red wine. On the other hand, a rose wine is best paired with a tamer chocolate such as white chocolate or chocolate with almonds or hazelnuts and wine gifts with milk chocolate can be paired with a dry white wine.

Only rather tame chocolates should be mixed with wine when putting together a chocolate and wine gift. For example, chocolate with mint might be divine in the right circumstances, but mixing this flavor combination with wine, whether it be red, rose, or white, is not going to be very successful. Stick to pure chocolate flavors or chocolates that mix chocolate types together or feature dry things such as nuts. A good rule of thumb is to imagine eating the filling with wine and see what your reaction is. There’s simply no type of wine that sounds good with mint.

Putting this into practice might sound complicated, but it’s really quite simple if you take things that you enjoy eating together and start analyzing their tastes. Assuming you enjoy drinking red wines, rose wines and white wines as long as they are served in the right context, imagine what you would like to eat with each of those wines. Your taste buds will guide you through the process if you let them take the lead when choosing a chocolate and wine gift.