Pairing · 4.5

Building your own pairing in five minutes

Taste the chocolate, pick a wine at least as sweet, check grip against fat, and taste wine then chocolate then wine again.

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Given a chocolate and a table of wines, or a wine and a table of chocolates, the pairing can be worked out rather than looked up. Here is the procedure, and it takes about five minutes.

First, taste the chocolate alone

Two things to establish, and neither needs vocabulary. How sweet is it, on a scale from a very dark bar to a milk bar. And how fatty does it feel, which is the difference between a bar that melts smoothly and one that feels dry and powdery.

Those two numbers determine everything that follows. Write them down or hold them; they are the input to the next three steps.

Second, find a wine at least as sweet

Ask where each wine sits between the driest and the sweetest on the table, which is the question the entry on sweetness recommends. Take something at or above your chocolate's sweetness.

If nothing on the table is sweet enough, the honest options are to change the chocolate for something darker or to accept that this is going to be a demonstration of rule one.

Third, check the tannin against the fat

If the wine grips, the chocolate needs fat to absorb it, so choose the one that melts smoothly rather than the driest and darkest. If the wine is soft, this step does not apply and you can ignore it.

Most white wines and most sweet wines skip this step entirely, which is part of why they are easier partners.

Fourth, fix the temperature

The wine is probably too warm and the chocolate is probably about right. Nothing can be done about either at a table, and knowing that the wine is being judged warm is worth something: it will be better at home.

Fifth, taste in the right order

Wine, then chocolate, then wine again. The third step contains the answer and most people skip it.

If the second sip is thin and sour, rule one. If your mouth feels scraped, rule two. If you taste spirit rather than fruit, rule three. If none of those and it still does not please you, it is a matter of taste and there is nothing to fix.

Three worked examples

Doing it the other way round

Given a wine you already have, the procedure runs backwards. Establish its sweetness and whether it grips, then choose a chocolate no sweeter than the wine, with fat in proportion to the grip.

This is the more common situation at home, and it is easier, because chocolate is more variable and cheaper than wine and you can keep three bars in a cupboard.

When the table gives you nothing suitable

Pair the wine with something that is not chocolate. Cheese, nuts and cured meat all appear at these events and all handle a dry tannic wine far better than any chocolate will.

Insisting on chocolate because it is a chocolate festival is how people arrive at the failures in the previous entry.

Recording it

Two lines: what the pair was and whether it worked. A week later that is enough to reconstruct the evening and to buy the right thing again, and without it the wines merge into one another by the following morning.

The short version

Taste the chocolate, pick a wine at least as sweet, check the grip against the fat, and taste wine then chocolate then wine again. The third sip tells you which rule you broke, if any.

What you need to do this at home

Three bars and two bottles. A dark bar around seventy per cent with visible gloss, a milk bar, and something at eighty-five or above; an off-dry white and something sweet and fortified.

That set covers most of the territory this journal describes and costs less than one good bottle of anything. Every combination in the table above can be produced from it.

Doing it with somebody else

Two people tasting the same pair and comparing is worth more than one person tasting twice, because sensitivity to astringency and bitterness varies and the difference is instructive rather than a disagreement.

It is also the fastest way to teach the three rules, which the entry on them describes.

The whole procedure in one line

Sweetness of the chocolate, then a wine at or above it, then fat against grip, then wine, chocolate, wine.

The version for a shop rather than a festival

You cannot taste before buying, so buy the chocolate first and the wine second, because chocolate is cheaper to be wrong about. Take the bar's sweetness to the wine shelf and ask.

How long it really takes

Five minutes the first few times, under a minute after that, because the first two steps become a glance and a question. It is a procedure to be internalised rather than followed forever.

Building one for somebody else

If you are choosing for a person rather than for yourself, ask what they drink normally rather than what chocolate they like. Wine preference is narrower and harder to work around; chocolate can be adjusted to fit almost any wine.

Somebody who drinks only dry red needs the darkest bar available and will not enjoy anything else, and that is worth establishing before buying either.

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 École Chocolat tasting guide.