Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Wine and hot chocolate go together
Surprise your Valentine with this trendy treat “We’re going to let some of that alcohol burn off,” said Patrick Byrne, after adding French merlot to a mixture of hot milk, dark chocolate, brown sugar, spices and more.
Come Valentine’s Day, guests at General Warren in Malvern will enjoy his spin on a trendy winter treat: red wine hot chocolate.
“It’s kind of like the Reese’s Peanut Butter commercial. It’s taking two things people like – chocolate and red wine – and putting them together,” explained Byrne, General Warren’s proprietor. “When you first look at it, you think, ‘Do these two foodstuffs go together?’ And they do. They actually complement each other really well.”
“Wine and hot chocolate – why not?” agreed Joanne Levengood of Manatawny Creek Winery, who actually started serving it years ago.
“You can call us the hip winery, a little bit of Brooklyn in Douglassville,” the winemaker joked, sharing recipes for Mexican chambourcin hot chocolate and raspberry hot chocolate made with Razz Bear Ease wine.
Trying this trend at home? Take her advice and skip the store-bought cocoa mix.
“That’s not hot chocolate,” Levengood stressed. “Hot chocolate is chocolate melted into milk – good chocolate, good dark chocolate.”
And if you’d rather dip than sip, head to Penns Woods Winery in Chadds Ford for “delectable” drunken chocolate fondue.
“I actually prefer the fondue because I can have a glass of wine with it. And I prefer straight-up wine,” said co-owner and marketing director Carley Razzi Mack.
“I love the fact that it goes well with the bigger, bolder red wines,” she described. “A port would go well with this… a nice, rich, sweet red… a moscato even.”
But in the fondue itself, Mack uses merlot.
Byrne also recommends a “lighter, fruitier wine” in hot chocolate. And for “a little bit if pop,” experiment with chipotle chili powder or an infusion of peppers steeped in wine.
“It’s different,” he said. “They’re going to love it.”