Gourmet food and wine is a no-brainer for setting up the perfect Valentine’s evening. Try a pairing of chocolate and wine—they are natural companions as they both have complex flavors and notes, as well as similar components and nuances. You can follow the same type of process as you would if you were doing a wine or chocolate pairing individually, and you can find all that you need either at our store or when you’re purchasing online gourmet food on our website.
To get started with pairing these gourmet food and wine items, here are a few easy-to-follow guidelines. You’ll want to pair lighter chocolates with lighter wines and darker chocolates with full-bodied wines. In the session itself, you’ll want to start with light and move towards dark in your tasting sessions.
The best pairings for semi-sweet chocolate include Zinfandel, Tawny Port, Syrah, Armagnac and Cognac. Perfect matches for darker chocolates include well-aged Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir or Sangiovese reds. You can also try a Merlot, Riesling or Sauvignon Blanc, and note that dessert wines are other great matches for darker chocolate.
A cool thing about pairing these types of gourmet groceries is that darker wines and darker chocolates are packed with antioxidants, which are lauded for their benefits against disease and for anti-aging. Antioxidants are molecules that fight and neutralize the oxidants and free radicals that enter our body from smoke inhalation, pollution, overexposure to sun, alcohol, eating fatty foods and exposure to radiation levels. Who knew that such an indulgent evening could be so beneficial to our health?
If you have time to visit our Sacramento gourmet food store, you can have an amazing experience on your own by sampling some of these gourmet groceries to find all the perfect elements for your Valentine’s day chocolate and wine pairing.
