Lindt Chocolate and Wine Pairing Party
Lindt recently launched a home party program called Lindt Chocolate R.S.V.P.. At hosted R.S.V.P. home parties, consultants lead tastings and earn extra income by selling Lindt products and gift items. Guests enjoy the tastings while learning some great chocolate tips. When I was contacted by Lindt to host a wine and chocolate preview party, I obviously said yes! Chocolate and wine are two of my favorite things!
The centerpiece of my party was a huge bowl of Lindt candies. It included a variety of their famous Lindt Lindor truffles along with other goodies to boot. My friend M and I fell in love with the truffle in the black wrapper – the extra dark. There were only a few in the bowl and he definitely got the last one!
Prior to the party, I hit up my local wine store to grab a few bottles of wine for the tasting and cut the chocolate in to bite size pieces. We were having our wine and chocolate tasting party after dinner, and it served as a great dessert course.
To taste each chocolate and wine combination, we followed the steps laid out in the R.S.V.P. Party Guide, taking breaks between each pairing to cleanse our palette with some water and crackers. The steps we took were similar to what you may have experienced in other wine tastings.
1. Examine the wine
2. Examine the chocolate
3. Snap the chocolate and examine the break
4. Smell the wine
5. Smell the chocolate
6. Sip the wine
7. Taste the chocolate
8. Sip more wine
We started with the Excellence White Coconut bar since it has the lowest amount of cocoa. The recommended pairings for this chocolate are a sweet Riesling, a sparkling pink or red wine, a Muscat, or Muscato. I have to admit this chocolate was really the shining star of the night. We were all intrigued by the white chocolate and coconut. The mild flavor of the white chocolate paired beautifully with a sweet wine and the subtle coconut flavor really brought everything together nicely.
Next up was the Excellence Extra Creamy Milk bar. The suggested pairings for this chocolate are a buttery Chardonnay, a Pinot Noir, or a Merlot. This milk chocolate bar was indeed very creamy. As expected, it paired beautifully with the Pinot Noir I had selected. Milk chocolate is one of my least favorite chocolates, but I really enjoyed the last step of the tasting with this combination. The melty chocolate mixed with the fruity wine brought out new flavor notes in both the wine and the chocolate.
The last chocolate we tasted was the Excellence 70% Cocoa Bar. This dark chocolate should be paired with a Cabernet Savuvignon, a Merlot, a Syrah, or Shiraz. The spiciness from the wine that I chose complimented this bar really well. I’ve always been a huge dark chocolate fan, so it was no surprise that this chocolate was one of my favorites.
I also had some of the white chocolate and bittersweet chocolate for my friends to taste even though it wasn’t part of the official tasting as outlined in the R.S.V.P. Party Guide. At the end of the night, the two favorites among the group were the Excellence White Coconut bar and the bittersweet chocolate bar.
If you’re interested in placing an order or wish to learn more about the opportunities that Lindt Chocolate R.S.V.P. has to offer you can send an email to RSVP Customer Service for more information.
Disclosure: Lindt provided the chocolate and the means to purchase the wines to pair with them. All opinions are my own.
I am Jen the Beantown Baker. Engineer by day and baking maven by night. Hubby serves as my #1 fan and official taste tester. We got hitched back in 2006. Barefoot. In the sand. With the waves crashing behind us. It was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made. 
loving the baileys idea! mmmmm
I use the same recipe (I think, I’ve had it for years; a standby. I think it was called “Chocolate Fudge Frosting”)
Best thing EVER to do? add a bit of mint extract – it’s very easily my most popular cake filling.. and my favourite icing to eat by the spoonful lol.
I haven’t found the perfect chocolate frosting yet, so I’ll definitely have to try this one!
i definitely, definitely have to try this soon. i can’t get enough of chocolate!
It’s funny about the no milk thing…I was making a new martini recipe that was super strong, so I thought cream would help it become drinkable – but I had no cream, but I did have Vanilla Caramel Coffeemate…it was great!
Ironically, I almost never have milk and always have Bailey’s. Go figure.
Sometimes you really do need a seriously dark chocolatey frosting. This looks absolutely ideal.
you really got into the food styling there — cute pic with the cupcake in the sprinkles.
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This sounds nice – I’ll have to try it one day! Jen, have you tried King Arthur Flour’s Supersimple Chocolate Frosting recipe? It is my favourite recipe (so far) for chocolate frosting – I’d definitely recommend it!
(Sheesh! deleted to fix a typo! Wish there was an edit function :))
Pegster – I have not tried the KA recipe. It looks similar to this chocolate frosting recipe which is delicious!
The think I love about this frosting is the stiffness and the fudgeness.
I like this frosting for when I want something quick. Otherwise, I like to use frosting that involves melted, good chocolate for those special occasions. YUM! I would gobble up your cupcakes in a second.
Great call on the Bailey’s – my mom would love that icing. I am going to try this next time I make cupcakes.
I would never think to sub bailey’s for milk. Brilliant. I love my chocolate desserts to be super chocolaty – this looks great!
LOVE the super pink sprinkles too. So pretty 😀
Oh, I forgot to mention that I’m hosting a giveaway. I wonder if it would come handy in this baking project…
These look great!! I love your photos!! I’ve been searching for a good chocolate-y frosting and I think I might try this!!
Would you mind checking out my blog? 😀 http://ajscookingsecrets.blogspot.com/
I could have definitely used this recipe for my sourdough chocolate cake this week
http://gamereviewwiki.com/bikinibirthday/2010/06/21/day-158-binge-weekend/
i just made this frosting today to go inside some cupcakes using your cone method. and i topped with vanilla buttercream, at my hubby’s request.
let me just say this was so delicious i had to take my whitening strips out early so i could lick my fingers, and then the bowl. then my 15 month old attacked me to lick the spatula. we were all sugar high and happy before dinner.
my hubby said “every day i am happier i married you because of things like this”
Thanks for sharing this recipe!!!
Kris – I love hearing comments like that! Thanks for trusting my recipes enough to try on your hubby!
Mmm this looks fantastic, though the ingredients look similar to another delicious recipe I’ve used before that is pretty soft. I’m guessing it’s the butter temperature. Should it be room temperature here? Thanks!
You definitely want your butter at room temperature so it creams nicely.
I have the Bailey’s..lol but I’m out of cocoa powder. Have you ever tried subbing it with melted chocolate? And if so how much do you use?
Best frosting ever. Perfect taste, texture and color. It was divine. I will never use another chocolate frosting recipe ever again. Thank you very, very much! It is truly a gift. 🙂
Jen,
I am a person who has been cooking from the age of 5 ….lol now i have certin likes loves and disliks lol however i found a revepie i wanted to make and it called for a fudge type frosting…. knowing i didnt have one i liked for this so i started looking friday night and didnt come across your recepie until saturday morning so i got out my ingreadience.. but i didnt have Balies or white milk i had some Cream de Mint and Choc. Milk so i straied a tad from ur recepie …. i used 1/2 stick of butter, and to get 1/3 cup of liquid i used aprox 1/4 cup of Cream de Mint and the rest Choc. Milk. Plus the res of ur ingreadience …..omg this is the best dark choc fudge frosting ive ever had!!!! And i used the best dk. Cocoa i know of !!!!!! Thankyou thankyou THANKYOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I’m a baker and for the life of me I can’t find a thick chocolate fudge frosting. Is this frosting thick? I don’t want anything too creamy, like ganache when you let it sit. Help please!
beantownbaker — February 4th, 2013 @ 9:45 pm
This frosting is definitely thick. You can see in the pictures that it held up nicely to piping. It’s not as creamy as a ganache.
Thank you for responding! 🙂 I see that some people use melted chocolate instead of cocoa powder. Doesn’t it really matter?
beantownbaker — February 5th, 2013 @ 10:13 am
For this recipe, I always use cocoa powder.
If I make these the day before do I have to refrigerate them(since the recipe calls for milk)or can I leave them on the counter covered?
beantownbaker — October 30th, 2013 @ 8:21 pm
You can leave them on the counter. The milk in the frosting stabilizes so it won’t go bad. I’d put them in a covered container though.
Hi. Is the butter you use salted or unsalted?
beantownbaker — December 26th, 2013 @ 11:01 am
I always use unsalted butter unless specified as salted butter.
This is absolutely THE BEST chocolate frosting recipe I have EVER tried. I used it to frost some homemade vanilla mint cupcakes and topped them with an Andes mint for my daughters sweet 16 party. I had complete strangers tell me I need to open up a bakery and sell nothing but those cupcakes! Thank you so much for posting this. It is truly amazing.
beantownbaker — January 2nd, 2014 @ 1:32 pm
SO glad you enjoy this recipe! Nothing beats a great chocolate frosting.
I can’t wait to try this! I LOVE the flavor of the hersey’s dark choc frosting recipe but its so thin that i can’t use it for cupcakes, only for a cake. I even tried refrigeration overnight to see if that would thicken it up and it didn’t. so i can not wait try to this one for my cupcakes!
beantownbaker — April 27th, 2014 @ 2:53 pm
I agree. The Hershey’s one is just too thin for cupcakes.
I made a variation on this recipe for my daughter’s birthday cake yesterday and it was fabulous!
I’m still trying to figure out how 6T butter is enough though–I ended up putting in two whole sticks of butter and adding in the milk after the first addition (I added it slowly) of powdered sugar/cocoa combo–it was so thick and dry that my mixer was making new, horrible noises and I was sure it was going to die! LOL