Eduardo's Chocolate and Sake Experiment

The Chocolates:

Swiss Milk Chocolate with Hazelnuts 

Dark Chocolate with Almonds

Tony's 70% Dark Chocolate 

Cashew Butter filled Milk Chocolate 

Dark Chocolate with Almonds, Caramel and Sea Salt.

The purpose of the exercise was to prove or debunk ideas of the ideal sake and chocolate pairing. We consciously decided to focus on richer, umami driven and oxidative styles tending for complexity with the various chocolates.

Perhaps volume II will involve fresh, vibrant and floral styles including namazake.

For the experiment we poured all sakes at room temperature, in a standard Gabriel Glas stem along with the chocolates all at cellar temperature around 58 degrees.

Overall an indulgent and quite pleasurable experience that yielded some fun results.

Sweetness on the chocolate and sake is one of the biggest factors. Pairing a drier and more quiet style like hojo biden with the caramel, sea salt and almond dark chocolate turned good but pairing the same chocolate with Mana was a joy of a match. Both elements elevating their best attributes and creating a creamy, nutty festival.

Once we started playing with the dark chocolate and almonds a more generous style shinned on the dance floor. The Kinmon Chestnut Cask finish sake. Yeah, it is not a common style, yeah it's delicious. Drinking more like a whiskey or cognac and putting the dark chocolate on a pedestal. 

The milk chocolate and hazelnut example was clashing with most of the sakes but it found a friend on the more plush and citrusy Kinmon X3, second best pairing was the Mana 1751 completely changing the way it delivered. Texture party for sure!

Thank you Edo-san! We can't wait for chocolate and sake pairing Volume 2! 😬