Kit Kat Port: A Sweet Little Halloween

This time of year people always want to pair wine and Halloween candy. The problem is that most wines are not very combatable. Sugar affects the palate with most wines giving the wine - red or white - a bitter, muted taste. But Portugal comes to the rescue. Fortified wine like Ports or late harvest wines have enough sugary girth to work with candy, surprisingly balancing out the overt sweetness of the candy itself.

Dow’s 2011 Late Bottled Vintage Port & Kit Kats

Kit Kats have an immediate milk chocolate note and you don’t get the crispness until you eat it, which is less flavor and more texture.

Dow’s LBV Port from Portugal offers up muted berry flavors like red plum, raspberry and dark cherry along with a lack of sugariness, which means that the wine is not obliterated by the sweetness of the candy, actually quite the opposite, the Port is drawn down, but enhanced by the milk chocolate.

Cockburn’s Special Reserve Port
With grapes harvested from the steep terraced hillsides in Northern Portugal’s Quinta dos Canais, this velvety Port offers sweet blueberry, blackberry, vanilla, and the acidity and mature fruit tempers the sweetness and buttery-ness of the candy. The best thing about most Ports is that they offer minimal sweetness, making them available to match with different foods.

Bottom line is that you need to try various pairing for yourself and find what works best for you. At any rate, regardless of the season or holiday, Port should always be in your house!

Red, White and Chews – HalloWine Candy

Wine and chocolate is decidedly not my favorite combination, let’s be honest. Potent sweet rarely goes with wine, (and I’m not talking sweet wines) but some combinations of wine and candy do work pretty well (for my spirits and candy pairing for The Hollywood Reporter, go HERE). So…a few ideas this All Hollow’s Eve.

From Carneros come the 2013 Educated Guess Chardonnay (a mere $17) which takes as its dancing partner the Butterfinger, originally created in 1923 and intended to be a peanut butter concoction, though that is all but lost these days. Nonetheless the chocolate on the Butterfinger is of little concern as the majority of flavor comes from the flaky Butterfinger center with its sweet caramelized toffee
 

M&Ms are obviously artificially sweet, though nonetheless addictive and the 2014 Old Vines Sorbo a Sorbo Garnacha (Grenache, a mere $12) from Spain already with a bright acidity, menthol, cedar and blackberry allows the overt sweetness of the M&Ms to become mitigated and it softens the wine, dropping out the acidity so it feels more seamless while the chocolate loses it’s fundamental sweetness.

The best idea is to experiment with whatever candy and wine you’ve got on hand, or, as I suggest, try a few new things, either way, life is predicated on being creative!