Can you pair wine with chocolate? Should you? And, if so, which ones go together?

Different types of wine work with different types of chocolate, but getting the right pairing isn’t as hard as you might think. Photograph: Westend61/Getty Images

I spend quite a lot of Easter-time licking chocolate out of my molars, and using every reflective surface to check that my teeth haven’t dissolved. When chocolate is necessary, so is a wine that cleanses the palate, to drink alongside and to complement its flavours.

Chocolate is one of those foodstuffs that really coats the palate, which can make it difficult to enjoy anything much else; its sweetness can also ramp up the perceived bitterness, alcohol and acidity in a wine, and make it taste disagreeable. And it’s those factors that make people think chocolate is rather limited in terms of wine-pairing options.