This was supposed to be part of the Wine Blogging Wednesday series, but guilt kept me from posting in time. It’s wierd to write about eating frickin bon bons right now

There are certain foods, to me, that just don’t go with wine, that I couldn’t conceive of eating with wine. I still drink whole milk with my chocolate chip cookies, for example. I like cold Mexican beer with my pork tacos and room temp stout with my meat pies. And I love boozy coffee drinks with my chocolate.

I think it’s the fact that I love both chocolate and wine so much that I don’t want one screwing up the other. To me, good chocolate makes wine taste eh and dessert wine makes me not able to taste my chocolate. I tend to like darker chocolate, which has less sugar, so sugary dessert wines can completely clobber it. But I like certain flavors with chocolate, namely coffee, caramel, toffee, and nuts. So I start there with my pairing. These just scream tawny port to me, but I never buy the stuff. I can’t polish a bottle off in time.

So I always keep a bottle of good, under $20 Madeira handy.

Basically, Madeira can echo the flavors of tawny port on one hand (with its caramel-nutty goodness) and an oloroso sherry on the other (with hints of fruit and acidity).

The most beautiful thing about this wine is that you can take your sweet time finishing a bottle–they cook it when they make it, so it doesn’t “turn.” I look for a Madeira that isn’t cloying and syrupy, again I don’t want it to screw with my dessert fix.

This one smells like still hot, carmelized figs. You get a little dried fruit, a luscious toffee and almond aroma/flavor assault, then this beautiful, refreshing acidity hits you. Your mouth goes through all of this and is left ready for your next bite of dark chocolate ganache. You’re really smart if you put some of the Madeira in that cream you heated up for that ganache. But you’re really, really smart if you ordered chocolates from www.boulela.com. I like the scotch bonnets. You’re really, really, really smart if you enjoy just enough of this Madeira as so it doesn’t wear out it’s welcome, then pour the rest into a fresh, hot cup of milky coffee. Decaf of course, you don’t want caffeine harshing your mellow.