Wine and Chocolate Pairings

A few weeks ago I was asked to join Rebecca J Studio at Parker's Wine Walk. I had always wanted the opportunity to do a wine pairing with chocolate and here was my opportunity. Being a chocolatier, and not a wine expert, I had to get my research underway. After all, this was a WINE walk. The internet was my lifesaver (and my first stop) in discovering the wonders of learning the best wines to pair with the best chocolate, Dove Chocolate.

Whenever I have the need to research something about chocolate my first stop is http://www.dovechocolatediscoveries.com/ to see if the home office has any suggestions. In this particular research DCD didn't have exactly what I was looking for, but I did learn that...

IT STARTS WITH A BEAN

"It's a long journey from cacao bean to chocolate fondue. You already know how deliciously it ends,so here's an abridged version of how it got that way. The cacao tree was given the botanical name "Theobroma Cacao", meaning "food of the Gods." ( Even botanists are chocoholics!)There's a difference of opinion about whether the Mayans or the Aztecs were the first to cultivate cacao back in 300 A.D. We do know that this finicky tree is quite particular about its address. It resides only in latitudes no more than twenty degrees north or south of the Equator, thriving in the shade of the rain forest canopy. (Is it time for a "Save the Chocolate" fund-raiser?)As though life weren't tough enough for this delicate source of all things chocolate and wonderful, fewer than 10 percent of its blossoms ever mature into fruit. Each pod yields only 20-50 beans. (We're talking 400 beans for just one pound of chocolate)."

"The pods are split open and the beans are fermented, dried, roasted and shelled until only the precious nibs remain. The nibs are the essence of chocolate, containing more than 50% cocoa butter. They're ground into a liquid called chocolate liquor (no alcohol.. you'll have to wait for the Chocolate Martinis!)"

"At Dove Chocolate Discoveries™, we've spent years refining and perfecting our proprietary blend of just the right amount of cocoa butter and cocoa solids to mix with sugar and vanilla (or milk for milk chocolate). Then our chocolate goes through the refining and conching process that determines the flavor and texture of our chocolate. (Can you say "yummy, creamy, melt in your mouth?")At Dove Chocolate Discoveries™, our reputation for the exceptional creaminess of our chocolate comes from the high standards and extra care we take with every batch. Our unique Dove Chocolate Discoveries™ process is a closely held secret handed down for generations."

I digress...

This article is about pairing wine with chocolate, so I moved on to my next favorite website, AllChocolate.com This is where I find myself whenever I need to find something unusual about chocolate. Not only does this site have the basics about chocolate, but it also has answers for the culinary professional. I did find a very informative guide to the pairings of chocolate with wine. In general terms, pairing is done by how light or dark the two are. "The darker the chocolate the darker the wine." White chocolate should be paired with a light sweet wine, whereas a dark chocolate is paired with a full bodied wine. All Chocolate gives a wonderful, yet simple, guide to pairing and tasting your wine and chocolate.

Another fun resource is found at TheNibble.com which is an on-line magazine all about food. They say, "When pairing wine with chocolate, you can seek wines that have the same flavor notes as the chocolate (nutty, cherry, mint); or look for contrasts. As with food and wine matches, only you are the arbiter of what works best: There are no absolutes. Some people enjoy a fruity Cabernet or Zinfandel with chocolate, others find them too dry; some love matching Bourbon with chocolate, others find spirits too harsh. Most experts would recommend sticking with fortified wines because the sweetness and structure of the wines match well with chocolate, but that’s too simplistic."

The further I researched wine and chocolate pairings the more those last four words held true. Chocolate, just like wine, is a complex food that can have flavors the vary in complexity and in depth. For every chocolate there are many possibilities for a wine to match and for every wine there are many chocolates. For every combination found there can be a contrasting combination that is just as wonderful. Below I have put together a list of suggested pairings that I found along the way while doing my research. The list is only suggested pairings for my readers. In the end, the individual palate will be the best judge.

Pairings for Dark, Bittersweet and Semisweet chocolate:
· Zinfandel
· Syrah
· Tawny Port
· Armagnac
· Cognac
· Merlot
· Bordeaux
· Shiraz
· Cabernet Sauvignon

Pairings for Milk Chocolate:
· Riesling
· Sauvignon Blanc
· Dessert wines
· Pinot Noir
· Light Merlot
· Muscat
· Riesling
· Tawny Port

White Chocolate:
· Muscat Beaume de Venise
· Eiswein
· Berenauslese
· Muscato d’Asti
· Sweet Champagne(Demi-sec)
· Orange Muscat
· Fruity Chardonnay
· Riesling

Chocolate Trends in the US

For those of you who like those tid bits of trivia, here is a whole list of things "CHOCOLATE."

• Chocolate is America's favorite flavor. Surveys show more than 50 percent of adults prefer chocolate to other flavors.
• More than $16 billion of chocolate was sold in the U.S. last year.
• U.S. consumers eat 2.8 billion pounds of chocolate annually, representing nearly half of the world's supply.
• Americans prefer milk chocolate by a wide margin, but dark chocolate has a growing fan base, perhaps due to its suggested health benefits.
• Men and women purchase chocolate in equal amounts. (But, since men do most of the gift-giving, women probably come out ahead!)
• According to a study at Colorado State University, chocolate is the most commonly craved food in North America. 40% of American women and 15% of American men are "chocoholics."
• More chocolate is consumed in the winter than any other season.
• 66% of chocolate is consumed between meals.
• 22% of all chocolate consumption takes place between 8pm and midnight.
• Half of Americans choose what chocolate they eat by the shape of the piece.
• 63% of Americans say they can't resist buying chocolate for themselves when buying chocolate for someone else.
• Chocolate manufacturers currently use 40% of the world's almonds and 20% of the world's peanuts.
• U.S. chocolate manufacturers use about 3.5 million pounds of whole milk every day to make chocolate.

A Chef Demo of the Crazy kind

It was a lovely day yesterday. The sun was shining and the birds sang. I woke early to be sure to arrive at the ParkerFest at 6:30am for set up. This would be our second weekend at ParkerFest as Independent Chocolatiers with Dove Chocolate Discoveries. Lestra and I are the chocolate ladies at ParkerFest which is an outdoor famer's market being held here in Parker, Colorado.

On this beautiful Sunday morning my stomach was a bit twisted and my brain slightly left of center. I was in a funk of some kind. Couldn't shake it. Oh, that's right, I had my first ever Chef Demonstration that morning. I had signed up to do a demo back in March when ParkerFest was initiating this new festival. What an opportunity to share my chocolate passion with the world! I began to dream of what I was going to do for my demo. What recipe could I "WOW" the world with? What creation could I come up with that would leave lasting impression on all who attended?

The Entertainment Guide was the key. I poured over the pages and selected my favorite, "Mini Mint Mousse Teardrops" from the Spring/Summer 2009 Guide. It was a perfect choice. The teardrops scream the season with the beautiful green transfer sheet layed over white chocolate along with a luscious mint chocolate mousse filling. I chose to top it with a raspberry just to add a splash of color.

I spent March and April dreaming of my presentation. I rehearsed over and over in my mind what I would do and how I would engage the audience. It was perfect. I would have a gentleman assist me. That would be a great hook. He would be a large "manly" man who represented every man that feared the kitchen. He would be a perfect person to whip the heavy whipping cream while I demonstrated how to smooth the tempered white chocolate over the transfer sheet. All the while I would banter with the audience on the joys of having a man in the kitchen helping their wives prepare the ultimate meal. I would take the dark chocolate and add it to the mousse and my main man would continue to mix. I would explain the the differences in chocolates and where chocolate was grown as he finished mixing. The chocolate would be mixed into the cream and he would put it into the pastry bag. I would then carefully guide him through the use of a pastry bag and he would make his first ever, beautiful Mini Mint Mousse Teardrop. It was a presentation that every chef would be proud of. I knew that I could have even impressed our company's president Betty Palm. After all, she was in the audience in this dream.

REALITY CHECK ~~ Here is what really happened.........

It was a lovely day yesterday. The sun was shining and the birds sang. I woke early to be sure to arrive at ParkerFest at 6:30am for set up. On this beautiful Sunday morning my stomach was a bit twisted and my brain slightly left of center. Sunday was the day of my very first chef demonstration. I had prepared several things in advance so I could "magically" pull them out of my cooler like on the TV shows. My teardrops were a bit crooked and too big, but I wasn't worried. I'm not a trained chef and I thought that my less than perfect teardrops might appeal to "regular" people. I had them packed carefully in a plastic container and on ice packs just to be on the safe side. I didn't want them to melt. I had made a butterfly and leaf just like Chef Mark had at conference back in February. They were beautiful!

I met Lestra at the festival and we set up the new tent she had bought in the previous week (now there's another story that dreams are made of). It was beautiful! Then it hit me...I had forgotten the whipping cream!! "OMG" does not explain what I felt in the pit of my stomach! Thank goodness for Lestra. She had some heavy whipping cream at home and her husband, Joe, was on his way back to the festival. He would bring what they had. Problem solved.

Andrea (the show organizer) came by to check to see if I was ready for the demo. My mouth said yes, but the rest of me was screaming to run home. She stated quite matter of factly that I may not have a microphone because they couldn't find it. "Not to worry," I said. "I have a pretty loud voice." Soon after my sister called to wish me luck, although she didn't know I was doing a chef demo. When it came time to set up I had to hang up and that is when she wished me luck. I took her luck and put it in my pocket.

My set up went smoothly. The local coffee shop let me use their microwave to melt the chocolate for the mousse. I knew there wouldn't be electricity to run the tempering machine so I was going to "fake it" by just melting white chocolate. Andrea had found the microphone and I was wired to the main system. I felt so professional! My friends had come and so did my family. My daughter Kyra, had stepped up and announced, "I want to help. Can I?" Oh, how could I say no? Besides, I had just looked at my audience and there wasn't a single man in it! Well, there was, but he was full of piercings and tattoos. So, my daughter was now my assistant and my manly man hook was out the window. My brain raced to try and come up with the words to use to grab the audience. None came to me so I just began by explaining that you start by adding a quarter cup heavy whipping cream to a bowl, along with the....

WHAM! It hit me. I had forgotten the mousse mix!! It was at the tent. Not realizing the microphone was on, I announced to my daughter (and the entire audience) that I left it behind and asked her to run and get it. I turned and smiled and tried to make a joke. By now I had no idea what I was saying so I couldn't tell you what the joke was even if my chocolatier career depended on it. Kyra was gone and back in a flash (she was fast!). I proceeded to explain how you add the mousse mix to the whipping cream. I turned to Kyra to cut the top of the mousse packet off and POOF, the packet exploded in her face! "MOM!" she yells at me. "NO!" my brain screams at me. I calmly apologize and explain, "Well, there's enough left to still use." So, we continued on with the demo.

The next step was to cut the transfer sheet and spread the chocolate onto the transfer sheet. I was able to do this and my hands were not even shaking. Even though I was using melted chocolate, the transfer sheet stood up quite well and everyone said, "OOOOOh! That's beautiful." I was in the home stretch! I pulled out the teardrops that I had made earlier in the week and stripped them of their plastic and stood them proudly on a plate. The next step was to show how you can freehand with chocolate and write or draw with it. My plastic bag that I used didn't break as I carefully wrote the word , MOM. I reached in my trusty cooler to pull out the word, TOM. With the M broken I made it into a Tom and we moved on totally forgetting that I had a beautiful butterfly and leaf to demonstrate.

The importance of plating was next and I showed how easy it is to just put a bit of chocolate in the center of the plate and draw a star. It actually came out looking more like the last exploding nebula in the galaxy of Zork, but it was OK; at least it looked like a galaxy. Right as my galaxy exploded I saw out of the corner of my eye that I had set the teardrops in the sun and they were melting!

Just like the Wicked Witch of the West melted into a puddle of green witch goo, my teardrops were melting into puddles of chocolaty goo. I silently said a prayer that the mousse was done.... Yes. it was. I quickly plopped the mousse into the pastry bag and piped it into the melting teardrop and hoped beyond hopes that the teardrop wouldn't split wide open.

As the mousse went in without a single crack my mind had suddenly melted into a puddle of chocolate goo too. I had no thoughts left in my brain and I had no idea what to say next! It was as blank as a sheet of paper. So, I kept piping mousse. I frantically piped mousse! The seconds ticked as I tried in vein to think of just one word! Finally, out of the depths of my melted brain I was able to croak out an invitation to the audience to come up and try the mousee. They politely came to the stage (actually just a table under a tent) and were amazed in the creaminess and full flavor of the mousse.

The crowd of 10 cleared and the demo was over. I felt a huge relief lift from my body. As I looked over the melting teardrops on the table and the chocolately bowl where the mousse was mixed, I only had one thought. Thank goodness that Betty Palm was safely in New Jersey!

Eat Chocolate and Make Money

Eat Chocolate and Make Money - Taken from Food and Wine Magazine May 15, 2009

By Christine Quinlan, Senior EditorRelated

Dove Chocolate Discoveries PartyDove has come up with a new way to sell their delicious confections:the Dove Chocolate Discoveries party. It's similar to a Tupperware party, except you can actually have too much Tupperware. And unlike an Avon or Mary Kay party, you don’t have to lie to your friends and tell them they can’t live without that blue eye shadow that somehow makes their muddy brown eyes just pop! Anyone who decides to have a party can either be the host (and receive free treats) or take on the role of Chocolatier. The Chocolatier earns commissions on everything sold at a party, like the addictive chocolate-covered almonds and pretzels and baking mixes (which make things like chewy chocolate chip gingerbread cookies or chocolate cupcakes). Maybe they’ll even add a chocolate-brown car as incentive, which I would drive over an eye-roll-inducing pink Cadillac any day.

Sweet Beginnings for Dove Chocolate Discoveries

IN THE 1880'S, WHEN FRANK MARS WAS A YOUNG BOY, HIS MOTHER TAUGHT HIM TO HAND-DIP CHOCOLATE. With his wife, Ethel, Frank started a home candy-making business in Tacoma, Washington, that eventually grew into Mars, Inc., a world-wide industry leader in chocolate confections. Going back to its direct-selling heritage, Mars created DOVE Chocolate Discoveries™. Since then, the Chocolatier sales force has taken off. There are now Chocolatiers in 48 states. Don't miss your opportunity to be one of them! watch the chocolate advantage and see how!

NO PLACE LIKE HOME
The DOVE Chocolate Discoveries™ business was launched in 2007 by Mars, Inc. Our Corporate headquarters is a spacious 20,000-square-foot facility in the scenic countryside of Mt. Arlington, NJ. It's state of the art with a Chocolatier training center, a test-kitchen designed by the Culinary Institute of America and an 80-seat conference center. Key Chocolatiers are regularly invited in for training and brain-storming sessions. They also serve as tasting advisors when our expert chefs show off their latest chocolate inspirations.

YOU CALL. THEY ANSWER.
Our on-site Customer Service staff is trained to answer any questions and offer helpful advice about everything from products to process to the latest test-kitchen recipes. They're here to offer support and empower you to build your business with DOVE Chocolate Discoveries™.

MISSION At DOVE
Chocolate Discoveries™, our mission is to create small moments of joy around the pleasure of chocolate. We are committed to provide opportunities for people to build independent rewarding careers that can be balanced with a rich family life and benefit the individual, the family, our customers and our company.

CODE OF ETHICS
CHOCOLATE YOU BELIEVE IN, A COMPANY YOU CAN TRUST. DOVE Chocolate Discoveries™ is a proud member of the Direct Selling Association (DSA). The DSA has stringent rules and guidelines to ensure ethical practices and fair business transactions. As a member of the DSA, DOVE Chocolate Discoveries™ abides by the "Code of Ethics" designed specifically to protect the seller (i.e., the Chocolatier) and the consumer. Not only will you be working with the highest quality chocolate but you'll be doing it with a company that has the highest business standards. To read more about the DSA code click here.