The Best Wines To Pair With White Chocolate - Exclusive

In celebration of World Chocolate Day, we spoke with Michelle Pickering, chocolate sommelier and Senior Vice President of Global Chocolate & Cocoa Research & Development at Mondelez International — the company behind some of our favorite chocolate brands including, Cadbury, Milka, and Toblerone — to understand the best way to pair certain types of chocolate with certain types of wine. While we have plenty of ideas for how to pair wine with Halloween candy, our biggest question was which wines we should be pairing with white chocolate.

White chocolate has skyrocketed in popularity in recent years as a less caffeinated alternative to dark or milk chocolate that is creamy, decadent, and nourishing. Pickering is not only a chocolate sommelier, but she has also trained as a wine sommelier, so her guidance on how to pair wine and chocolate together comes from a deep understanding of both delicacies. 

According to Pickering, when you're diving into a luxurious white chocolate bar or a box of luscious white chocolate truffles, you should be drinking something bubbly. "White chocolate goes especially well with Champagne, Prosecco, [and] Cava — [all] your bubbly ones, let's put it that way," Pickering states.

The reason white chocolate goes so well with bubbly wines is because of its airiness and lighter flavor profiles. This ensures that the wines don't dominate the flavor of the white chocolate, which might be the case if you paired white chocolate with a bold red wine or a heavy port. The delicate flavor of champagne, Prosecco, and Cava bring out the nuances in the white chocolate without overpowering it.

An intense food and drink pairing has the ability to amplify the taste experience and flavor profile of whatever you're sampling. In thinking about pairing food and drinks together, our first recommendation is to determine their individual characteristics and to consider how those intensities will impact one another. Equally as important to keep in mind is that taste and flavor are two different sensory experiences that affect the way we respond to what we consume, which influences how to properly pair flavors together.