Wine assassin
What wine to look for to enjoy to accompany the chocolate Easter brings
Greek Orthodox Easter is only a week away. And we are all aware of the gastronomic traditions this religious week brings, from fasting, to a meat feast on Easter Sunday. Many are traditional and, as with Christmas, a few things are ‘borrowed’ from the West. One such thing is chocolate. Can we enjoy chocolate as well as wine? We shall see!
Coffee mates so well with chocolate that it’s a wonder anyone would dare suggest any other partner – like wine. Nonetheless, chocolate is beautifully trendy, not only at Easter, and wine is handsomely in vogue, so it should come as no surprise that a sedate cup of coffee may sometimes be replaced with a sexy glass of wine. Not a sobering thought.
You best proceed with caution though, because chocolate is a notorious wine assassin. As Joanna Simons notes in her seminal Wine With Food: “Death by chocolate is a common form of wine extermination”. Like a male mantis the new suitor is apt to be devoured.
I have worked at mating wine with chocolate for a small part of my life with wine. As the wine sommelier of my Flexible Taste Buds, it became a ‘de rigueur’ exercise. Many times the chairmen of the club seemed to focus their dessert efforts on chocolate. It became then one of my charges to perform an ideal wine and chocolate marriage two to three times a year, selecting a different wine each time for the sake of learning and entertainment.

Mainly, I had to consider sweetness. Most chocolate desserts are downright sweet – especially white and milk chocolate concoctions. Wine must always taste as sweet as its accompanying dessert or it will fail to measure up. Exit 95 per cent of the world’s wines. Sometimes, I had to contend simultaneously with bitterness - as in dark – and bittersweet-chocolate recipes. Good-bye most white wines. Usually I had to attempt to foil ‘thickness,’ what Simons calls “heavy taste bud-smothering texture”. So long light-bodied, low-alcohol wines, no matter how sweet. With the exception of white-chocolate desserts, I had to prepare to match strong flavours. Forget vinosity.

I soon discovered chocolate’s best buddies belong to the Muscat grape varieties. Their wines are usually sweet (save for Alsace Muscat, which is the ideal mate for fresh asparagus). They have an underlying bitter characteristic and are often fortified. And they are always pungent. Sweet fortified Muscat wines became my non-brainier solution to most dessert challenges. There are not many at our disposal in Cyprus but look for Moscato D’Asti Italian and Pedro Ximenez sweet Spanish wines available in the market.
For the same reasons, many fruit-and-berry wines proved handy. Traditional sweet fortified wine types like Sherry, Port, Marsala and Commandaria offered contenders. When chocolate’s natural bitterness was a decided factor, I found I could match up a heavy-bodied dry, or near dry, red table wine, such as a Late Harvest Californian Zinfadel, even a bold warm-climate Cyprus Cabernet Sauvignon.

It didn’t then take many attempts to discover that a couple of the world’s known sweet wine classics, German Rieslings and French Sauternes, failed to mate with most chocolate desserts. Now you should know what to look for to enjoy your chocolate bunnies after the Easter feast.

Wine of the Week
2001 Domaine Filiria Boutari, Appellation Goumenissa, Macedonia
Greek Easter and yet another Greek wine, this time from the world famous Boutari. Goumenissa is one of Macedonia’s most palate friendly appellations. With the vineyards situated at 180 meters above sea level, in this wine the amelioration of Xinomavro grape along with 50 per cent Negoska, kept for one year in French oak barrels, fills out the middle palate. Negoska increases alcohol and softens the intense tanniny character of Xinomavro and is responsible for the intense red colour in this wine. Complex bouquet filled with sweet ageing and spicy aromas. Strawberry and black berry fruit on the nose mingle on to the palate to resolve a tight finish. Along with the fruit aromas, you discover chocolate, cocoa, wood and spices. Good acidity and tannin that aid the aging of the wine. Served at 18ºC, this is my choice to accompany my meaty Easter Sunday.
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