Sparkling Sweet Wines

 

We’ll start with the most versatile wine, in our estimation, for pairing with chocolate – Brachetto d’Acqui.  The Brachetto is a red grape grown almost exclusively inthe Piedmont region of Italy.  It is a slightly fizzy, light-bodied wine with distinctive notes of strawberries.   This wine is an obvious, perfect match with chocolate-dipped strawberries – but also works with a variety of milk and semi-sweet chocolates, as well as chocolates that have hazelnuts or almonds.

Another very versatile wine is Moscato D’Asti, often a forgotten little gem.  It is a low-alcohol semi-sweet wine made in the northwest province of Asti.   We see a lot of the Risata Moscato D’Asti in our area wine stores.  We have tried a number of versions, but the best has been the Ceretto, with nice flavors of melon and grape with lots of fruit and a long finish. This nicely balanced wine works well with semi-sweet chocolate – it does get a bit overwhelmed by desserts with a lot of sugar.

A very unusual, a very fun sparkling wine comes from Australia – sparkling Shiraz.  This is a full flavored, full bodied wine that work with strong flavors.  Just for kicks, we tried it with some jalapeno chocolates – and it was not overwhelmed with the intense heat.  We’ve used this wine at barbeques, and have gotten rave reviews.  They are a bit hard to find, but we did cajole our local wine store to carry a few producers.  Within a month, they were sold out.