Day 20: Port Sippers

“It isn’t like it was the best chocolate, or the best red wine. But having them together for the first time told us that hmm, there might be something here.”

That was a new friend, now in her mid-twenties, talking about “port sippers” when she was in college. The idea was to have chocolate with red wine — usually Ghiradelli squares or Hershey kisses, alongside a high-alcohol red wine.

The combination foreshadowed what, years later, the wine manager at my local Costco would point to, as the reason why Apothic red was their best seller: lots of fruit, some sweetness, and a hit of mocha for good measure.

Pairing red wine and chocolate isn’t a new idea — think of the traditional recommendation to serve Port wine with chocolate cake at dessert, or chocolate fudge and Merlot — even if “port sippers” is a new idea to me. A current iteration is a cocktail recipe for a Chocolate and Port Sipper: equal parts chocolate liqueur and ruby port, poured over ice and garnished with a lemon wedge.

What interests me about this theme is its longevity. From first forays into wine and food pairings in college dorm rooms (when neither the wine nor the chocolate mattered much), to $14 “grown up” cocktails, to sophisticated wine/chocolate flights that have been adopted by pastry chefs and elaborated at winery tasting rooms around the world.

My friend couldn’t be specific about which wine she and her friends first poured with their chocolate. Franzia? Layer Cake? She was shy about that part, but not about the lightbulb moment that flashed a spark of interest she’s been following ever since.

Quick Background Note: The Blue Collar Wine Guide is a 30-day, 30-wine experiment that looks at some of the world’s most popular, consumer-friendly wines. The idea is to take off my wine-writer shoes and stand instead in the shoes of Jane-and-Joe-in-front-of-a-wall-of-wine. Thank you for reading today’s post!