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Chocolate is a tough thing to pair, especially milk chocolate. The sweet affects of the chocolate and lingering creaminess make these candies a disaster for dry reds and even worse for anything white. Even fortified wines struggle.
Port may be able to get the job done when it comes to dark chocolate, but milk chocolate is still a bit too sweet, and the rich fruitiness of the wine ends up soapy and unpleasant. Even some Vin Santos and Recioto wines can’t quite wipe away the sweet richness of milk chocolate.
Luckily, the south of France does provide a few fortifies wines that will do the job. Specifically, the southern Languedoc region, bordering Catalunya to the south. These fortified wines are highly regarded, but perhaps a bit under appreciated. Many average wine consumers, and even those familiar with viticulture and enology have never even heard of these fascinating AOCs.
When I go to pair a wine with food, I first consider the attributes of the food and whether I can use complimentary, or contrasting flavor profiles. Milk chocolate’s flavor is very obviously sweet so we will need to seek wines that have high residual sugar - higher so than the majority of sweet wines.
We also need a wine that’s got a neat acid profile, and some lightness to help cut through the creaminess. A mouthful of flabby wine will lead to soupy texture. Lastly, luckily milk chocolate is not averse to red fruit, dark fruit or orchard fruits - this flexibility leaves us with an excellent amount of options.
Banyuls is probably the best known fortified AOC from France, and that’s not saying much - clearly, as they’re almost untenable on even specialty wine store shelves. But things are slowly changing and buyers are having a reckoning with these incredible wines. Banyuls is an are a in France represented within the boundaries of three towns: Cerbère, Collioure and Port-Vendres. Any still unfortified wine made in this area is actually labeled as Collioure.
Despite their delicious favors of dry prune, raisin, raspberry, and redcurrant, these wines offer complimentary flavors of chocolate, vanilla, allspice and cedar as a firm underpalette, making them a good match for the savory flavors in the chocolate. They also have fantastic residual sugar juxtaposed to the chocolate, and in most cases come in a variety of different types.
Banyuls AOC regulations are rather loose compared to most other AOCs, in that they allow for multiple color offerings. The primary grape here is Grenache noir, and in Banyuls Grand Cru, the top of the line wine made here, Grenache noir must account for seventy-five percent of the blend. The red wines must be aged for minimum of thirty months - but it’s this aging process and the variances in it, that really give Banyuls its flavor.
The majority of the wine made in Banyuls is red, however, most producers offer Ambré and Blanc options as well. These wines range in color from straw to cognac brown, and they are made with various color mutations of Grenache noir, like Grenache gris or Grenache blanc; proprietary blends are common. Banyuls rosé is also common, though these wines are made from Grenache noir and Grenache gris, with shorter maceration periods and less exposure to the skins.
There is also a variation of wines known as rimage, these can be made from any grape, though they must spend thirty months in barrel. The key to a Banyuls rimage is a maceration time of five weeks. This extended time on the skins imparts more color, dry fruit flavors, and tannin to help preserve the wines while they age. these wines often are aged much longer than thirty months.
One of the best examples of these wines and a fabulous companion for chocolate is Domaine de la Rectorie Cuvée Thérèse Reig Banyuls. This wine is structured and elegant with satisfying sweetness. It has that typical Banyuls fruitiness with a nice undertone of vanilla, chocolate, fresh cassis, lavender and redcurrant. It has a wonderfully sweet blend of fresh and dry fruit, palatable chocolate and soft complexity.
Banyuls production is done on high sun-exposed terraced vineyards of gravel schist and loose dry podzols. Red dirt in this region is not uncommon and the soils are obviously very low in nitrogen. The wines are often over-ripe when picked, and sometimes fermentation is halted by itself, as so much alcohol can be produced that the alcohol begins to kill off the yeast. However, as is always traditional, mutage is performed: the addition of neutral grape spirit to totally halt fermentation. Alcohol usually ends up being much lower than port at just sixteen percent.
What makes these wines unique is the aging process. Two different types of aging can take place: outdoor and indoor aging. These wines can be aged in oxidative oak barrels indoors, or, alternately, though sometimes in tandem, they can be aged in large glass vats known locally as bonbonnes. These unsealed containers are usually surrounded by chicken wire and exposed to the sun for months during the summer, to bring out a flavor known as rancio: oxidative. this can be a nutty, or even chocolatey flavor underneath all the dry fruit.
Just to the north, you can find the quaint town of Rivesaltes, which is known for another incredible wine that makes a superb pairing for milk chocolate. Like Banyuls, Rivesaltes is made up of several different towns, Agly, Têt, and Tech - vineyards here are also terraced and steep, with clay and gravel loam making up the definitive soils in the region. Limestone can be found on the slopes, and the gravel soils are good draining, which allows the grapes here to over-ripen as well.
Because of their elevation, they see the cooling affects of the northerly winds that sweep through the valleys and the high plains in the area, though not with the power of the mistral in the Rhône valley. These winds are called the Tramontane winds. they help to dry some of the sea breezes coming in from the coast. The area also sees little rainfall, and it’s important to understand that these wines are subjected to some of the hottest sun in all of Europe.
Like Banyuls, Rivesaltes consists of several different styles, such as Garnet, the standard, accounting or the majority of production, ambré, tulié, hors d’âge, and rancio. Rivesaltes garnet must contain at least seventy-five percent Grenache noir, it must be aged for twelve months and three of those months must be in bottle.
Rivesaltes ambré must have the must separated before fermentation. These wines will be aged in oxidative containers for two years. Tulié is a red wine containing over fifty percent Grenache noir, that is aged in an oxidative container for two years, and hors d’âge is a variation of either of these examples that has been aged for five years.
Light colored Rivesaltes examples are made from Grenache blanc, gris, Macabeu, Malvoisie du Roussillon, and Muscat Blanc, though this grape must account for less than twenty percent of the blend.
These wines have a smoky flavor, and this come in part to their longer than usually time in oxidative states. Characteristics of prunes, almonds, cranberry, and brown sugar are not uncommon when tasting Rivesaltes. When it comes to the light blends, these wines typically exude nuttiness and orchard fruit character. flavors of cinnamon applesauce, balsamic vinegar and cognac are familiar flavors.
The wine I would recommend is Cazes Rivesaltes Ambré. This wine is a syrupy liquid orange just on the verge of offensive without being overly sweet. Flavors of tangerine, mango, kiwi and dry cherry are as common as those of chocolate syrup, black tea and almond. The acid balances well, and overall the wine just makes a fantastic drinking product that has enough acidity to wash down the milk chocolate, and add some fresh fruit flavors as well.
Just like in Banyuls, these wines are made with neutral grape spirit at the height of their ripeness. This mutage then stops fermentation and the wines end up at around fifteen and a half percent alcohol, and these wines head to the fermentation process. Fermentation is also not dissimilar to Banyuls and other regional wines, seeing as these wines are added to fermentation vessels to intentionally oxidize them. The glass bonbonnes are the most common local fermentation vessel.
The last appellation in the region making fine fortified wines suitable for milk chocolate is Maury, which lies just to the west. This picturesque little town is formed in between the communes of Maury, Saint-Paul-de-Fenouillet, Lesquerde, Tautavel and Rasiguères. The wine producers here are smaller than the other two appellations, and they focus mainly on small-batch production and make a very similar wine - but often higher quality, due to a bit more attention to detail. Being further away from the sea, and at higher elevation can also be a benefit here, as producers get snapping southern breezes from the Pyrenees, and also from northern France.
The soils here are a clay marl with scattered limestone agro-calcerite deposits, also focused on terraces outcroppings of vines that benefit from the infertile soils and rocky granite topsoils. Production is similar - mutage is conducted resulting in a sixteen percent alcohol content, and producers focus mainly on Grenache noir (90% of the blend), though some small amounts of Macabeu, Carignan and Listan Negro are permitted. The only style made in Maury is red.
Often the fermentation has stopped before the juice has fully been pressed of the grapes when the spirit is added, this is called mutage sur grains. Maceration is again extended sometimes out to five weeks before removal of the must and transfer. This is to ensure that the fermentation is completely thorough and that the most possible alcohol has been extracted from the sugars in the wine. This process also allows secondary characteristics to take shape and bready characteristics begin to form.
The Maury to look for at the store is Semper Viatge Maury - this wine is nutty and oxidative. this is the typical style Maury. There are some burnt rubber characteristics, with bit of butterscotch, walnuts, redcurrant, fresh strawberry, balsamic vinegar, and walnuts. This is a complex and syrupy-sweet wine to enjoy, with the off flavors of volatile acidity from sun baking.
These wines are then transported into the bonbonnes, and left outside for up to a year to bake in the sun. The bottles are then transferred to oxidative wood casks. This process often also causes dark leftover remnants in the bottle that serve as a source of darker and more Some vintners choose to age their wines in total for up to fifteen years, making these wines some of the longest aged fortified wines on the market.
That’s all,
~K