Chocolate · 2.4
Milk, dark and white by composition
Milk protein binds the same polyphenols that make chocolate astringent, which makes milk chocolate easier with a tannic wine than expected.
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The three kinds are not points on a scale from serious to frivolous. They are different recipes, and the differences decide how each behaves against wine.
Dark
Cocoa mass and sugar, usually with extra cocoa butter, sometimes with an emulsifier and vanilla. No milk, or a trace.
It carries the bean's own bitterness and its own tannins, which is why the entry on tannin warns that a very dark bar and a very tannic wine multiply rather than cancel.
Milk, and the thing nobody mentions about it
The same, with milk solids added and usually more sugar and more butter. The milk fat softens the texture and lowers the melting point.
The interesting part is the protein. Milk proteins bind the same polyphenols that make chocolate astringent and bitter, in the same way that saliva proteins do, which means a milk chocolate arrives with much of its own astringency already neutralised.
This has a direct pairing consequence that runs against the received advice. Milk chocolate is easier with a tannic wine than its sweetness suggests, because the protein takes some of the tannin. The sugar rule still applies and still governs, so the wine has to be sweet enough, but the astringency problem is smaller than expected.
White
Cocoa butter, sugar and milk, with no cocoa solids at all. It is the fat from the bean without the part that carries flavour, which is why it tastes of dairy and sugar and faintly of the butter itself.
In the United States the standard of identity sets minimums for cocoa butter and milk solids and a maximum for sugar; other jurisdictions set their own, and whether white chocolate is chocolate is a question of regulation rather than of taste.
For pairing it is the hardest of the three, because it has no bitterness and no tannin to work with and is simply sweet and fatty. The sugar rule bites hard: it needs a wine sweeter than most people will pour.
The fourth one
A pink chocolate introduced commercially in 2017, made from beans processed in a particular way, marketed as a fourth type alongside the other three.
Whether it constitutes a distinct type or is a processing method applied to existing categories is disputed, and regulators in different places have answered differently. Tasted rather than argued about, it is sharp and fruity, and it behaves like a white chocolate with acidity, which makes it easier to pair than white and harder than milk.
The one to recognise and avoid
Compound coating replaces cocoa butter with another vegetable fat. It is cheaper, it does not need tempering, and in many places it may not legally be called chocolate.
You can identify it in the mouth: cocoa butter melts just below body temperature and the substitutes do not, so compound coating feels waxy and lingers instead of melting cleanly. Most cheap moulded novelties are made of it.
Why the percentages are not comparable
A dark bar at seventy and a milk bar at forty are not measuring the same thing against the same remainder. In the dark bar the other thirty per cent is sugar; in the milk bar the other sixty is sugar and milk in an unstated ratio.
Comparing the two numbers is comparing two different questions, and the entry on percentages goes into why even one number on its own is doing less than it appears.
Choosing for a wine
| Chocolate | What it brings | What it needs from the wine |
|---|---|---|
| Dark, high butter | Fat, little sugar | Can take tannin; needs modest sweetness |
| Dark, low butter | Astringency of its own | Softer wine, sweeter than you think |
| Milk | Fat, protein, plenty of sugar | Real sweetness, and tannin is survivable |
| White | Fat and sugar only | A properly sweet wine, or nothing |
Why milk chocolate melts differently
Milk fat and cocoa butter behave differently as they warm, and a bar containing both softens over a wider range rather than snapping from solid to liquid. That is why milk chocolate feels creamy and dark feels clean, and it is a property of the fats rather than of the sugar.
It also means milk chocolate is less forgiving of a warm room and harder to keep in good condition on a tasting table under lights.
The category between them
Dark milk chocolate has milk solids and a high proportion from the bean, typically between fifty and seventy per cent, and it has grown from a curiosity into a common thing on small makers' tables.
For pairing it is arguably the most useful of the lot: the protein softens tannin, the fat carries aroma, and the sugar is moderate enough that the sugar rule is satisfied by an ordinary off-dry wine rather than by a dessert wine.
Reading the shelf
Ingredients are listed by weight in descending order almost everywhere. A bar whose first ingredient is sugar has more sugar than anything else in it, whatever the front of the packet says about cocoa.
That single check separates most confectionery from most chocolate in about two seconds.
The short version
Dark brings tannin, milk brings protein that softens tannin, and white brings neither and needs a genuinely sweet wine. Those three sentences predict most of what happens on a tasting table.
Also in this part
- 1.1
Why a dry red and a sweet chocolate fight
The wine must be at least as sweet as the food. Everything else in this entry is a qualification of that sentence.
Read it → - 1.2
Tannin and fat: what happens in the mouth
Astringency is not a flavour. You are noticing the absence of lubrication that was there a moment ago.
Read it →
For further context, see FDA white-chocolate standard.