With Valentine’s Day on the way, it’s time to start planning your food and beverage-based wooing strategies — and for many, that involves two quintessential symbols of romance: chocolate and wine. But how do you make sure you pick the right wine and chocolate to pair together?

We asked two experts to weigh in: Jennifer Sahara, winemaker and owner at Sakura Winery, and Larissa Milano, owner of Bluebirds Chocolate, both based in Livermore, California. They’d just personally tested the wine and chocolate combinations they planned to share with the participants of a class.

“The number one thing I always tell people is to either go to a higher-end shop or go to a chocolatier, if possible,” Milano says. People should also look for chocolate that has cocoa butter listed in the ingredients, she says.

When it comes to pairing chocolate with white wines, look for a milk chocolate, and consider picking a buttery white wine to marry with a nutty chocolate, since the fattiness in the nuts plays well with the buttery notes, she says. For rosé wines, white chocolate with strawberry or fruity notes makes for a great combination.

And for red wines, lighter reds can work well with both milk and dark chocolate. However, she says, people should be careful about mixing bolder, stronger red wines with bold, dark chocolate, because both contain tannins, which can be bitter. Opting instead to pair a bold red wine with a sweeter chocolate provides a better flavor balance, she says.

That approach fits with Sahara’s pairing strategy as a wine expert.

“With wine, there’s the contrasting pairing, and then there’s the complementary. When they’re both bold, doing the contrasting one is good — it brings out something in both things,” Sahara says.

Specific pairings they’d just tested out — and readily approved — included a pinot grigio with milk chocolate and pistachio, petite verdot rosé with white chocolate and strawberry ganache, and a late-harvest tempranillo — a dessert wine that’s not quite as sweet as port, she says. Because the wine is on the sweet side, it can be paired with a dark chocolate that’s not quite as sweet — like a 70% cacao chocolate, she says.

Additionally, spicy chocolates tend to go well with earthy, peppery wines. “It really complements and adds to the complexity of the wine,” Sahara says.

At Bluebirds Chocolate in Livermore, owner Larissa Milano prepares an array of chocolates, including a wine-pairing bonbon box, which includes milk pistachio, double dark raspberry, dark cherry pistachio, dark almond and dark ganache flavors. Done right, combining the right bite with the right wine is evocative of the scene in “Ratatouille” in which Remy creates sensory magic by combining different flavors into one mouthful, she explains. “You can see and feel the marrying of the flavors, and it’s a really cool experience.”

“We pair food and wine so much,” she adds, “chocolate sometimes gets missed. I would love for more people to play with different types of chocolate and wine.”

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