Chocolate + Wine pairings for Valentine’s Day

From wine expert, James Beard Journalism Award winner, and author of Red, White and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grap to Glass Natalie MacLean:

?Wine is liquid sensuality: Its heady bouquet stimulates the appetite and its velvet caress soothes that desire,? she observes. ?What other drink is described as both ?voluptuous? and ?muscular?? And when you pair wine with the mouth-coating luxury of chocolate, the combination is impossible to resist.?

The creamy flavors of chocolate go best with sweet, full-bodied, high-alcohol wines, MacLean notes. She suggests wines to complement 50 chocolate dishes in her online matching tool at www.nataliemaclean.com/matcher. Just click on ?desserts? to find pairings for chocolate mud pie to chocolate cheesecake.

Natalie?s top 10 wine and chocolate matches:

1. Dark Chocolate and Banyuls, France
2. Chocolate-Covered Biscotti and Recioto Della Valpolicella, Italy
3. Chocolate-Orange Cake and Liqueur Muscat, Australia
4. Chocolate with Nuts and Tawny Port, Portugal
5. Milk Chocolate and Tokaji, Hungary
6. Bittersweet Chocolate and Amarone, Italy
7. Chocolate-Dipped Fruit and Icewine, Canada
8. Chocolate Ganache Truffles and Sauternes, France
9. Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake and Framboise, California
10. Chocolate Hearts with Cream Filling and Cream Sherry, Spain

I can’t wait until I turn 21 and can take a wine-tasting class that will hopefully give me chocolate tasting skills as well!