Words by Chloe Hayward.
Chocolate and red wine, one of the most unexpected and complementary taste combinations known to man. We had been salivating ever since we received the invitation to attend a Malbec and chocolate tasting evening with master chocolatier Paul A Young at Cavas de Gaucho to celebrate the pairing of the deep and dark duo as part of Chocolate Week. The evening was in honour of a chocolate developed by Young that contains Vina Patricia, a Malbec hand selected by Gaucho’s wine director Phil Crozier, which comes from their Argentinean vineyard and was made in a limited quantity in 2008.
We are instructed to have a sniff and a swill of the Malbec to adjust our palates to the alcohol in the wine, before tasting the dark shards of chocolate. It is a delicious fruity wine, with a vanilla sweetness that seeps through its deep, warm flavour. Crozier proceeds with a crash course in the art of making this organic wine, which comes from grapes that bask in the sun up a mountain facing the Andes. This helps them to develop their thick skin, creating such a great wine. Right, science lesson over – now onto the chocolate. Young leads us through a trio of chocolate, explaining the purity of the cocoa used. Much like the careful process of harvesting and fermenting excellent grapes for wine, chocolate is treated in a similar way. “Good chocolate should snap”, we are told and indeed this high in cocoa Madagascan snaps with a satisfying crack. We taste more of the dark morsels and sip the wine again, which reflects the fruity, red berry notes within one another in harmony – oh yes, we can talk wine, don’t you know. The highlight however is one of Young’s bestsellers, a salted caramel chocolate that we can’t urge you enough to go out and buy. As seasoned chocaholics – we like to think we can separate the good from the bad – the sweet and savoury tastes comingle as the liquid centre oozes out with serious deliciousness. For sceptics of wine with dessert, the evening proved that the careful selection of flavours to complement one another, can open up a whole new world of taste. We left feeling rich, deep and decadent, (cocoa is an aphrodisiac after all). So, go out and be seduced by that burgundy liquid paired with a slab of the dark stuff. Caution though, we’re afraid a bottle of half price red from Tesco’s and a bar of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk just won’t cut it kids.
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