Matching wine with chocolate is fraught with difficulty. Sweet, milky chocolate tends to make most wines taste lean and hard - unless the wine is much sweeter than the chocolate; and dark, high cocoa-content chocolate can be bitter and clash with any astringency and/or acid in wine. This is why the very best wine for chocolate and choc-based dessert tends to be very sweet, soft and rich fortifieds. Muscat can be good, tokay excellent, but the chocolate wine par excellence is Spain's 'black sherry' - or other fortified wines - made from extremely ripe, raisined Pedro Ximénez grapes. Adding some citrussy, fruity, spicy flavours into the mix, as in this dessert, makes the match even more fabulous. - Max Allen
It’s a hard ask for a wine to withstand the sweet assault of chocolatey things, but Spain’s Pedro Ximénez fits the bill.