The great chocolate and wine debate – love it or hate it – rages every time a chocolate holiday arrives (which should rightfully be every holiday and then some.)

Luckily, German chocolatier Eberhardt Schell thinks he has the answer – even with milk chocolate.  Schell conducted extensive pairings during the annual Prowein wine trade show in Düsseldorf, Germany. Schell’s chocolates are from Gundelsheim, Germany but any reasonably good chocolate will work.

After extensive tasting, I can report that Riesling with Umami Papua milk chocolate and Lemberger (Blaufränkisch) with 70 percent cocoa dark chocolate from Tonga are great successes. Vintage Port with 70 percent chocolate from São Tomé is a more moderate partnership. I am sorry to report that Cabernet Sauvignon and chocolate is still a pairing best avoided.

Chocolate lovers also gravitated to the Symington Family Estates, the Portugal’s largest Port producers. The Symingtons are test marketing Nirvana, a dry, dark style of Reserve Port specially blended by Symington winemaker Charles Symington to go with 70 percent dark chocolate. The arduous research for this new Port, expected to be launched later this year under the Dow’s brand, was undertaken by Guido Francone, Belgium’s top sommelier, and that country’s University of Leuven.

Producers around the world are listening to consumers who like to eat and drink. There were scores of food and wine pairings around the show. The Alsace wine trade organization presented a mouth-watering combination of Crémant d’Alsace and finger food with “Wine and Spices”, while “East meets West” was a stimulating tasting area involving various versions of Japanese sake and European cheeses.

Outside the trade show, more than 30 restaurants, hotels and wine retailers in Düsseldorf offered tasting sessions, special menus, cooking classes and parties as part of “Prowein goes City”.

With over 3,600 exhibitors from 50 countries spread over six vast halls and over 38,000 visitors, Prowein 2011 “brings the supply and demand sides of the wine and spirits market together at an international level in a uniquely professional atmosphere,” said Hans Werner Reinhard, Deputy Managing Director of Messe Düsseldorf, the show’s organizer. This annual event in Germany is now well established as a major business date on the wine trade’s calendar.

Meanwhile if you want to test chocolate and wine pairings at home, Cocoa-rich European chocolates are available in many specialty stores. And lovers of a Hershey bar need not despair. Pair it with medium dry wines such as Vouvray from the Loire in France or a California Riesling. Controversy solved? Well, perhaps just another taste to make sure.

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