Madeira & chocolate

It’s rare that I need a prompt to open either a bar of chocolate or a bottle of Madeira, but it happened yesterday when this picture arrived in my inbox from IVBAM, the promotional body for Madeira wine.

To be fair to me, I’ve been on wine travels in Bairrada followed swiftly by a dose of the flu-like palate-stripping virus which few in the wine trade seem to have escaped.  I don’t suppose it helps that we are constantly spitting in each others’ direction!  Into spittoons, of course.  This, my second career, is way more civil than the first (litigating)!

Suffice to say I can thoroughly endorse IVBAM’s injunction to surprise yourself with the explosion of flavours and sensations of chocolate and Madeira.  Chocolate needs an intense partner and, in my experience, fortified wines make for the best matches.  Even if they’re aged, as I discovered when I enjoyed the ultimate combination during a visit with Blandy’s last year (reported here).

Most fortuitously, I was in the company of Sarah Jane Evans, Master of Wine and chocolate, who brought along a bar of Amelia Rope’s artisanal Pale Lime and Sea Salt milk chocolate.  It simply blew us (and Chris Blandy) away with Blandy’s Bual 1863 which, I might add, was a feast in its own right with its dried and fleshier tamarind and jaggery spice, tobacco too, wed to a tight spine of grapefruity, pithy acidity.  Rope’s chocolate seemed to really animate the mid-palate, with its citrus kick and sprinkle of salt, launching the wine even higher into the stratosphere. Another recent successful match which, once again featured citrus flavours, was Henriques & Henriques Malvasia 10 Year Old – terrific with chocolate and cinnamon torte with orange blossom mascarpone cream (see my review here).

So what about the match which was despatched my way by Blandy’s – Blandy’s Alvada 5 Year Old Rich Madeira with Green & Black’s 70% Organic Dark Chocolate? Unusually for a Madeira made from the island’s top grapes (wines are usually single varietal), Alvada is a blend of Malmsey and Bual wines – Madeira’s sweetest styles, though Bual (my favourite grape) always has wonderfully tangy, fruity acidity.  Aged for five years in American oak casks, there’s a touch of chocolate-friendly vanilla in the mouth, which is soft and rich, with a good depth of dried apricot fruit. But is it rich enough to carry this intensely bittersweet chocolate? I am not so sure, but melt the chocolate and make brownies or even better dip dried apricots in it and I reckon you’d be onto a winner. Blandy’s Alvada is £12.99 at Waitrose & £14.49 at Booths.