Nectar's wine & chocolate pairing

There’s nothing quite like a flight of wine to pique your fancy except when it’s paired with chocolate! And when the venue is as lusciously elegant as Nectar Wine Lounge, you experience the fanciful made real with all your senses….

On a cool, blustery summer evening in San Francisco (but then again, what evening isn’t cool and blustery in SF?), Nectar featured an exquisite wine and chocolate flight that charmed all.

Everyone’s perennial favorite—my sea salt caramel in 70% dark chocolate—again took the house. Paired with a 2009 Saracco Moscato D’asti from Italy, described as “cashmere on the palate,” the delicate Moscato wrapped the caramel‘s melt-in-your-mouth butteriness in gentle sweetness.

Next on the flight was my ginger-infused, hand-dipped dark chocolate truffle with the 2005 Hans Lang Riesling Kabinett from Germany. My, oh my, this was one zingy combination–the bright and tarty citrus of the Riesling embraced the slight spiciness of the ginger bringing both into full harmonic resonance. Yum.

Sea salt caramel, ginger-infused, chile pepper and Cabernet-infused chocolates

The most fun pairing of the evening was the Guatemalan chile pepper truffle with the NV Uncle Dick Sparkling Shiraz (known as the “Red Brute”—with a name like that, how could it NOT be fun?) Leave to the Aussie’s to get this so right. One of the guests described it as “a party in your mouth,” and another as “full of deliciousness.”  How fun is that?

The final wine and chocolate pairing in the flight was an identical twin, perfect in every way: a 2007 Domaine Eden Cabernet Sauvignon from the Santa Cruz Mountains (a new wine for Nectar introduced that very evening) with a Cabernet-infused dark chocolate. Truly sublime.

Nectar will have this pairing available for a few weeks or until they run out of chocolate, so drop by for a real-life flight of fancy.