Pairing · 4.4

Pairings that fail, and why that is worth knowing

Six reliable failures, five of which reduce to the three rules and one of which is mint. Each symptom names the rule you broke.

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A pairing that fails tells you which rule you broke, and that is more useful than one that works. This is a catalogue of the reliable failures, with the diagnosis attached to each.

Dry red and milk chocolate

Rule one. The chocolate outranks the wine in sweetness, the wine loses its fruit and shows its acid, and a bottle somebody liked five minutes ago tastes cheap.

This is the commonest failure at any tasting and the fastest to demonstrate. Remedy: a sweeter wine, or a much darker bar.

Very dark, low-butter chocolate and a young tannic red

Rule two. Both partners are astringent, the chocolate offers no fat to absorb the wine's tannin, and the two drying sensations add together until the mouth feels stripped.

People choose this combination deliberately because both components seem serious. Remedy: a bar with more cocoa butter, or an older, softer wine.

Anything with mint

Not a rule at all: an aromatic clash. Menthol dominates whatever is in the glass and lingers for several minutes, so it also ruins the next pairing after it.

There is no remedy. Eat it at the end or not at all.

Chilli chocolate and a tannic red

Capsaicin and tannin amplify each other, so a mild chilli bar becomes hot and the wine becomes rough. It is the least comfortable pairing commonly encountered.

Remedy: something sweet and low in tannin, which is what chilli chocolate is generally served with in the places it comes from.

Oaked white and dark chocolate

Intensity rather than mechanism. The wine is not chemically defeated; it is outshouted, and after two mouthfuls of chocolate nobody can taste the wine at all.

Remedy: a smaller or sweeter partner for the wine, or accept that this wine belongs with the food and not the dessert.

Coffee chocolate and almost anything red

Bitterness stacking. Roasted coffee notes and the bitterness of the cocoa and the phenolics of the wine all pull the same way, and the result is one-dimensional rather than unpleasant.

Remedy: a sweet wine, or a fortified one, where the sugar gives the bitterness something to sit against.

White chocolate and any dry wine

Rule one at its most extreme, described in the entry on sparkling wine. White chocolate is sugar and fat with nothing else, and only a genuinely sweet wine survives it.

Why it is worth doing these on purpose

Because a failure that you predicted teaches faster than a success that you did not. Trying dry red against a milk bar once, deliberately, attaches the sugar rule to a sensation rather than to a sentence, and after that you never need the rule stated again.

Two minutes at a festival, using things already in front of you, and the rest of this journal becomes something you can feel rather than recall.

The failures that are only yours

Sensitivity to astringency varies considerably between people, as does sensitivity to bitterness. A combination that two people at the same table describe completely differently is usually one of those, and neither of them is wrong.

Which is worth remembering before insisting to somebody that they should be enjoying something.

And the ones that are the room's fault

Late in a warm evening, with a coated palate and everything on the tables drifting upward in temperature, pairings fail that would have worked two hours earlier.

Before concluding that a combination is bad, notice what time it is and what you have already eaten. It is the commonest confound in everything this journal describes.

The short version

Six reliable failures, five of which reduce to the three rules and one of which is mint. Each has a symptom that names the rule, and each is worth producing once on purpose.

The one that fails for a reason nobody expects

A very good, very subtle wine with any chocolate at all. The pairing is not wrong; it is a waste, because the qualities that make the wine worth its price are exactly the ones that disappear under cocoa butter.

Save the interesting bottle for something that lets you notice it, and pair the chocolate with something robust and cheerful. This is the piece of advice most often ignored at expensive dinners.

Fixing a failure at the table

Three moves, in order of how often they work. Change the chocolate, which is easier than changing the wine and usually available. Change the wine to something sweeter. Or take a mouthful of water and something plain and start again, because a good proportion of apparent failures are carryover from the previous table.

Keeping a list

Of the failures rather than the successes. It is shorter, it is more useful, and it is the one nobody keeps.

Failures that are actually the chocolate

A bar that has bloomed, or one that has picked up a smell from being stored badly, will fail against everything and read as a pairing problem. Taste the chocolate on its own first, which the procedure in the next entry begins with for this reason.

The failure that is really a temperature problem

A pairing that worked at four o'clock and does not at nine is usually the room rather than either component. Everything on the tables has drifted upward, the wine is showing alcohol, and the chocolate has softened.

Before rejecting a producer's wine, ask whether they have a cooler bottle open. Most do, behind the table, and most will pour from it if asked.

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 WSET pairing resources.