Bissinger’s chocolate and wine tasting

Tasting chocolate and wine is easy to do at home.

With a little imagination and advance planning, you can execute many types of tasting. The general protocol for a wine tasting is the same no matter what else you taste. It can apply to tastings as diverse as chocolate and wine, liquor, ice cream, chocolate, or even chocolate paired with wine.

The quality and varieties of chocolate now available for tasting seem to grow almost daily. The same is true of fine wines to pair with the chocolate.

The 2009 South Beach Wine & Food Festival held an expensive chocolate and wine pairing event with limited seating. At far less cost, you can hold a similar event for your family and friends.

Tools and rules

The following tools and rules for pairing chocolate and wine were devised by the chocolate makers at Bissinger’s Handcrafted Chocolatier in St. Louis, MO. If you don’t happen to live near the Bissinger’s  store in St. Louis’s Central West End neighborhood, you can buy the company’s products through a catalog or online. Some are available all year, others on a seasonal basis.

Bissinger’s sells a Chocolate & Wine Tasting Collection, a box of 12 one-ounce Bissinger’s chocolate bars scored in quarters – three each with a cacao content of 38, 55, 60, and 75 percent. The box also contains a card with tasting and pairing information.

The 38 percent bars are milk chocolate, with more cacao than a typical over-the-counter candy bar. Bissinger’s describes them as “luxurious milky chocolate emboldened with strong chocolate character in the European style.”

The 55 percent dark chocolate bars are a “medium strength dark couverture with defined chocolate notes balanced with approachable sweetness.”

The 60 percent dark chocolate bars have a “smooth, intensely chocolaty expression with a long, velvety finish.” 
 
Homestead, FLThe 75 percent dark chocolate bars are “full bodied, assertive chocolate maximizing your chocolate experience” and contain the highest amount of cacao mass. This variety of chocolate also is sold all year in one-pound bars that you can break into pieces and melt for cooking.

Tasting card

With the chocolates comes a tasting card with information on pairing a variety of Bissinger’s chocolate products with
wines, including sparkling, viognier, chardonnay, pinot noir, merlot, cabernet, and port.

To these suggestions, I would add mango wine from Schnebly Redland’s Winery  near Homestead, FL, which my family and I substituted for chardonnay to taste with Bissinger's 38 percent cacao bars. The mango wine, itself a delight, went very well with this chocolate.

Schnebly’s Web site describes its mango wine “as a nice mid-range wine. The flavor of the mango doesn't push too hard and has a nice soft finish. You can compare it to a white zinfandel.”

When I reported this distinctively Florida pairing to Bissinger’s, Jeannine Manning of the company’s staff replied via email that “the mild sweetness of mango should complement the mild, milk chocolatiness of the milk chocolate.” 

The red wine we used was the 2005 Bissinger’s Cabernet Sauvignon, the company’s private-label wine from Napa Valley, CA.

Tasting suggestions

The back of the tasting card offers advice on how to conduct the tasting:

Give each guest a menu listing the chocolates and wines to be tasted, with space for notes, and glasses of water and unsalted crackers for cleaning the palate.

Bissinger’s suggests using its Fruit Gummy Pandas for palate cleaning – especially pomegranate, because blueberry is too strong. We thought the pandas were too sweet.
 
To ensure that you experience the chocolate’s full flavor, warm it to room temperature at least 30 minutes before your tasting begins.

In general, you should drink sparkling and white wines at 53 degrees and red wines at 65 degrees, although Manning says that drier white wines may be served closer to room temperature.

Taste chocolates from light to heavy, and wines from sweet white to dry white to red. Try different combinations to see how the flavors change. The printed suggestions say champagne can be served before the white wines, between the whites and reds, or as a finale wine.

Conduct a blind tasting, with the wine bottles covered and the chocolates unwrapped. Have the participants guess at what they are tasting.

Finally, Bissinger's says, “there are no right or wrong combinations as long as you enjoy them.”

The University of California, Davis, has developed an aroma wheel  that will help you verbalize your impressions of what you taste, but it’s not a prerequisite to enjoying the experience.

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