In my review of Brix milk chocolate – a line of chocolate that is specially designed to go with wine – I tested the combination and was unimpressed, and I said that I thought dark chocolate would be more likely to go with wine in a meaningful way.

Well, it just so happened that our esteemed editor had received a sample of what Brix calls “medium dark.” Being as she has a terrible, tragic disability – she doesn’t like dark chocolate, the poor dear – it seemed sensible for her to pass it on to me.

The Brix medium dark suggested pairing is with zinfandel, syrah, rhone, merlot, or shiraz. I wouldn’t know what those have in common – I admit I tend to choose wines by whether they have a good picture of an animal on the bottle – but the label explains, “the smooth cacao pairs perfectly with lighter, fruit-flavored wines, enhancing their aroma.”

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Brix chocolate is specially designed to pair with wine. If you’re not a wine drinker, you might wonder what this could mean. I didn’t drink alcohol when I was younger, and didn’t understand what people meant about how food and wine went together. When I learned to drink much later in life I figured out how they should have explained it to me: Cookies and milk.

Cookies are good without milk, and milk is fine without cookies. But put together, they’re both even better. Cookies and milk isn’t just good + good = 2 goods. Put together, they’re a whole new thing, more than the sum of their parts. And once you get used to the combination, a cookie feels a little incomplete without the milk. A cookie makes you wish for a glass of milk. Without it, the experience feels incomplete. It’s just not as good as it could be.

Well, no matter what kinds of pretentious nonsense you have read about wine, it’s the same deal. Some foods just go really well with wine the way a cookie goes really well with milk. Some whole cuisines are designed to taste good with wine, like Italian and French, and once you get used to the combination, an Italian dinner seems incomplete without a glass of wine.

So, I wondered if this was true of Brix chocolate. I was a little skeptical about the concept, because although I do drink wine with dinner, I don’t usually drink it with dessert. A hot cup of tea is what goes with dessert, for me. (Or, of course, milk, if dessert is cookies.) After a lifetime of eating chocolate this way, had I been missing something? That might be kind of cool, actually. So I had an open mind.

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We’ve all heard of how chocolate and wine pairs for those among us who have richer tastes. But Chocolate Wine? Yes, you can rejoice, it exists!

Shallon Winery in Oregon specializes in unique wines using whey and fruit to produce many tempting flavors, one of which is a Chocolate Orange wine. According to owner/wine maker Paul van der Veldt, the mixture, which sports a 10% alcohol content, is more of an intense alcoholic chocolaty syrup. The wine is very thick, syrupy and intensely chocolaty and your imagination is the limit for serving suggestions.

Shallon Winery is located in Astoria, Oregon, and welcomes visitors. If you’re in the area, it’s worth a stop in for a tour and tasting. The Chocolate Wine sells for $32 per 12 1/2 fl oz bottle, so you’ll have to splurge a little for this unique treat. If anyone has the pleasure of tasting this, please let us know how it is! Shallon Winery also makes other exotic wines such as Lemon Meringue Pie wine and Blueberry wine!

• Chocolate Wine article at Wine Press Northwest
• Chocolate Wine at Shallon Winery

chocolate, wine, alcohol, Oregon

I’ll admit it….before I started this site, I had no idea candy companies made their candies in different flavors in other countries. Well, they do. Recently, Hershey’s has come out with multiple new flavors in the U.S. – Extra Creamy, Coffee, White Chocolate, Orange Creme, and Mint. In Japan, Kit Kat is made by Nestle and now also comes in Noir, Wine, Strawberry, and White Maple Syrup. The reviews for Strawberry and White Maple Syrup are coming next week. For an amazing full list of Kit Kat flavors (with pictures), check out the Wikipedia Kit Kat page.

The Reviews:

Noir: Both the Noir and Wine flavors come in small boxes containing 16 mini Kit Kat bars which are so freakin’ cute. The outside of the Noir is covered by a dark, bitter chocolate, there is a nut cream between the wafers, and it is dusted with a rich cocoa powder. The Noir Kit Kat is good…really good. It tastes expensive and decadent – not two words I usually associate with Kit Kat. If you like Kit Kat and dark chocolate, you should love Noir Kit Kat.



Wine: I don’t like red wine at all, so I was expecting to dislike this flavor, but I was pleasantly surprised. It didn’t taste like wine to me or my wife. It’s a super-creamy, slightly strawberry-ish flavor that tastes really good. The description of it says it has a distinct wine aftertaste, but I didn’t taste it at all. Despite (or because of it) the fact that it didn’t taste like like wine to me, it was quite good if not a bit sweet – almost too sweet. Definitely worth a try though.

Buy Japanese Kit Kat at Jbox.com
Wikipedia Kit Kat page
breaktown.com (Japanese Kit Kat site)

Wine X Magazine has come up with a Jelly Bean Wine Bar. Basically, they have recipes for combining Jelly Belly jellybeans to mimic the flavors you can taste in wine.

… the Jelly Bean Wine Bar delivers true flavors associated with specific varietals/styles. The idea is to taste the individual jelly beans first, to understand the different flavors associated with certain wine varietals. Then you put all of the flavors in your mouth at the same time, chew them together, and voila… you experience the wine varietal itself.

I’m not crazy about candy tasting like wine (I don’t like red wine), but they are Jelly Belly jellybeans – the combinations can’t taste much like wine, can they? Here is an example recipe for Cabernet Sauvignon: Blackberry + Blackberry + Cherry + Raspberry + Plum + Licorice + Dr. Pepper (and throw in one Dirt for French wine).

Seems like a lot of jellybeans to put in your mouth at once and that’s not even a big recipe (the Typical California Chardonnay needs 12 beans).

fun, food, foodblogs, wine, jellybeans