Wine for Chocolate

Like many people, I have a sweet tooth; and, like many people, my sweet tooth focuses on chocolate. I love chocolate: milk chocolate, dark chocolate, filled chocolate, flavored chocolate, chocolate cakes, cream pies, Nutella spread, brownies, cookies, you name it, I love it.

My love for sweets and chocolate goes way, way back: when I was young and got lost in the grocery store, all my parents had to do was look in the check-out aisle where I could always be found sniffing the candy and gum; at night, when I was very young and supposed to be asleep, I could just feel that my parents and siblings were eating chocolate downstairs, and I came down, crying "I'm missing all the fun".

As you can imagine, Halloween was a dream come true for me, and I would get weepy with joy looking at my bag full of candy, and feeling anger and resentment toward anyone who had been crap enough to give me one of those teeny boxes of raisins. I mean, come on, raisins? Who are you trying to kid? You may as well just have taken your five bucks and thrown it in the trash, because I guarantee, that's where your raisins went. The biggest problem I had was not eating all of my candy in one night. Unlike my sister, who kept her candy in a pillowcase in her closet, and would still have candy in it the following Halloween, I struggled to have any candy remaining a few days after the holiday.

One unfortunate Halloween when I was about 7 or 8 years old, my parents went out of town and my grandparents were staying with us. Not knowing that they really needed to take the candy away from me, my grandparents left me alone with my loot, and I must have eaten it all in one sitting, because I woke up in the middle of the night pulling a Linda Blair, which my poor sister then had to clean up.

By far the best chocolate story from my youth is the chocolate-covered cherry story. My father used to be the chocolate-master: he kept chocolate hidden in various places and would bring it out and give some to us whenever he saw fit. I didn't have to be too old or too bright to realize that he always kept the chocolate in the small bar in our den where he kept the booze. One day when I was about nine or ten years old, I was alone at home, and fell victim to a chocolate craving of biblical proportions. Unable to control myself, I went to the bar where there was a box of recently opened chocolate covered cherries. Carefully, I removed one of the cherries from its tray and ate it, putting the box back exactly where it had been.

That first one was so delicious, with the smooth milk chocolate and that sweet syrupy cherry middle, that I just had to have another one. And another one after that, and another and another, until, with horror, I realized that there were only four chocolate covered cherries left in the box. Frantically, I rearranged them in a few different ways until I found the configuration that I felt best made the four chocolates look like many, many more, and put the box back in the bar.

A day or so later, we were all in the den watching television, when my father got up from his chair and asked the question that usually filled me with glee: "Is it time for a treat?". I blanched, I froze, I panicked, I decided this was a good moment to make my exit while still keeping my cool. So I jumped up from the couch with a frenzied "I have to go to the bathroom", ran from the room, got into my bed and hid under the covers. After a few minutes, during which time I just knew my family had discovered the missing chocolates, I heard my father call my name. It was said with a kind of accusing, yet coaxing tone, the kind you might use with a puppy who is hiding after peeing on the floor. He called my name, and I decided to maintain my cover and throw him off the scent by shrieking back: "I didn't eat them!!!"

To this day, no one in my family can look at a chocolate covered cherry without remembering that day. So to commemorate the demise of those chocolate cherries, I suggest we have a taste of one of Steve's and my favorite ports, Heitz Cellars Ink Grade Port Napa Valley. This fortified, sweet wine is a blend of many lush Portuguese grapes, and smells richly of dark cherries, blueberries, raspberries, coffee and yes, chocolate. It is delicious on its own, but also complements strong blue cheese and yup, you guessed it, chocolate. A bottle of this rarely lasts longer than 2 weeks in our house. It would appear that nothing sweet is safe with me...just ask the cherries.