Chocolate and wine tastings
I’m sure many of you will have watched a Channel 4 documentary – Willie’s Wonky Chocolate Factory – in 2008, which was followed in 2009 by a second series; Willie’s Chocolate Revolution: Raising the Bar. The subject of the documentary was Willie Harcourt-Cooze, the UK’s only independent grower and producer of cacao.
Last week, Willie relocated his chocolate factory in Devon to London for one day only. I was kindly invited to attend his signature bean to bar talk with demonstrations and tastings.
Harcourt-Cooze took guests through the process of making chocolate from raw bean to product, creating some of his signature dishes both sweet and savoury for sampling, (including toast smeared with avocado, topped with a fried egg, chilli oil and grated chocolate) demonstrating the extraordinary versatility of cacao.
Througout the talk, samples were passed out enabling me to taste the bean following each stage of cocoa processing eg before shelling, after shelling.
Harcourt-Cooze’s beans are traditionally roasted using 100 year old machinery to produce an authentic, individual pure cacao and chocolate bars. “The machines may be smaller and slower than today’s modern machines, which are made for speed and commercial profitability, but they capture the subtle notes and unique flavours of the cacao in a way the modern machines are unable to do,” says Harcourt-Cooze. After fermentation roasting is the next most important stage in developing their unique flavour and aroma. High quality beans don’t need heavy roasting, so Harcourt-Cooze lightly roasts his in 60-kilo batches for 20-30 minutes. The beans are then winnowed, ground and refined in a stone mill and then conched before reaching the final tempering stage. Lastly, the bars are wrapped and packed at the factory.
Harcourt-Cooze has been farming cacao for more than a decade at Hacienda El Tesoro, his farm high in the mountains of Venezuela. His cacao bars are made from beans selected by Willie from the very best cacao regions around the world. The bars are all single bean origin of exceptional quality, each bar representing the natural flavour of the region. Like fine wine the beans will take their flavour from the soil in which they are grown.
Talking of wine…..
I was also invited to visit Vinopolis (http://www.vinopolis.co.uk/) to attend a chocolate and wine tasting event. Pairing wine with chocolate, many confectioners say it can’t be done, but, as I learnt last week, if you have the right wine to complement the right chocolate it can be a match made in heaven.
The wine experts at Vinopolis gave me six specially selected wines to taste with an accompaniment of the finest chocolates from around the world.
Here are the chocolates and wines I tasted:
- Champagne Nicolas Feuillatte Reserve Particuliere Brut Non Vintage (Epernay, France) Cadbury’s milk chocolate (Birmingham, UK)
- Grant Burge Miamba Shiraz 2008 (Barossa Valley, Australia) Pralus Forastero 75% (Tanzania)
- Arte Benedicte Madiran 2005 (France) Green & Black’s dark 70% organic (Belize)
- Blandy’s Duke of Cumberland medium rich Madeira (Madeira, Portugal) Pralus Criollo 75% (Madagascar)
- Plein de Sens Jurancon 2007 (France) Green & Black’s Maya Gold 55% (Belize)
- Hugel Gewurztraminer 2009 (Alsace, France) Montezuma’s dark chocolate chilli 73% (Mexico)
Cadbury’s is a lower quality chocolate with a lower cocoa content compared to the other chocolates, only 23%, and I didn’t particularly like it as a match. Tom Forrest, tour development manager says, “Chocolate with a higher cocoa content is more likely to taste good with wine, as high amounts of sugar can detract from the flavour.”
As you can see all the wines chosen are quite young and this is because newer wines are less subtle in flavour, and strong flavours are needed to match the chocolate.
My favourite match was pairing number 5, which used a white dessert wine, and a chocolate with a relatively low cocoa content. Stereotypically, white wines are paired with chocolates with a low cocoa content.
Please email me your thoughts on this subject ([email protected]) – do you think chocolate tastes nice with wine? Do you have any particular favourites?
