Wine milkshakes go on sale in US

In a move that may turn many a stomach, LA burger chain The Counter has added wine milkshakes to its menu. As reported on db.com, the milkshakes, inspired by classic desserts, are being blended at select Counter restaurants across Los Angeles. According to their creator, the wine helps to cut through the sweetness of the shake, with the flavour more milkshake-like to start, but with a wine finish.

The burger chain is offering three flavors: Pinot Noir, featuring cherries, chocolate and vanilla ice cream, Sweet Peach, made using sweet wine, peach nectar and vanilla ice cream, and Mimosa, featuring sparkling white, orange juice and vanilla ice cream.

Perhaps due to the ongoing success of the Santa Barbara-based film Sideways, in which the protagonist Miles extols the virtues of the difficult but rewarding Pinot Noir grape, the Pinot Noir shake is proving the most popular of the trio. The shakes can be found on pour at The Counter restaurants in Santa Monica, Marina Del Rey, Century City, Toluca Lake, El Segundo, Torrance and Hermosa Beach.

William Curley interview

Wine and the City catches up with master chocolatier William Curley to get his opinions on wine and chocolate matching, and find out about his latest project: recreating classics like the Jaffa Cake and Bounty bar.

Wine and chocolate matching with William Curley

With Chocolate Week in full flow last week, I was invited to a wine and chocolate matching event with master chocolatier William Curley, hosted by Quintessentially Wine at Curley's Belgravia shop.

Much has been made of wine and chocolate matching, and I was keen to hear from the master chocolatier as to whether he thinks there's anything in it.

Eight pairings were put forward, with wine writer Matthew Jukes picking the wines, and Curley the chocolates. Interestingly, only one of the eight wines was sweet. Jukes begins by telling us he's bored with the cliché that chocolate can only be matched with sweet wine, and tonight aims to prove that dry wine can pair equally well.

I admire his risk taking, and championing of daring pairings, but as I scale down white wine heavy list, I wonder whether he'll be able to pull it off. First up we try Ayala NV Champagne with a thyme & Scottish heather honey chocolate. Elegant and smooth with herbal notes, the chocolate is very pleasant, but I'm not wowed by the Champagne match.

Next up is a JJ Prum, Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling Spatlese 2007, paired with a jasmin choc. The wine has an intensely limey, slate-like nose, but the white flower and honey notes on the palate mirror the jasmin in the chocolate, bringing the pairing into balance. I'm hopeful for what's to come. The second of the still whites is an Etienne Sauzet La Tufera Burgundy 2008, paired with a wonderfully textured Piedmont hazelnut chocolate. While the mineral and citrus notes in the wine don't echo those of the chocolate, the hazelnut seems to bring out the brioche and wild honey notes in the wine. The best match so far...

Moving on to the reds, we try Curley's best seller, and the chocolate all chocolatiers are judged by: sea salt caramel, with a slightly mismatched garriguey Roussillon 2008. We then munch on a mint chocolate paired with a 2005 Parker Terra Rossa Cabernet Sauvingnon from South Australia's Terracotta-soiled Coonawarra region.

This is easily the best pairing of the night. The minty, medicinal, black currant fuelled wine is the epitome of what a Coonawarra Cab should be. Decadent and velvety on the palate, it fuses effortlessly with the chocolate, that attacks the palate pleasingly with a blast of fresh mint.

The penultimate pairing is inspired: 2006 Rene Rostaing Cuvée Classique from the Cote Rotie with a szechuan pepper chocolate. The peppery Syrah becomes even more pronounced after a bite of the chocolate, bringing the pepper to the fore from the savoury, gamey flavours. Last up we are treated to a sweet wine: 2006 Clos Dady Sauternes, matched with William's take on the Jaffa Cake.

Sipping the Sauternes and nibbling the Jaffa Cake, all the flavours intertwine until the one becomes indistinguishable from the other. The tangy marmalade in the wine perfectly compliments the orange in the Jaffa Cake. It occurs to me why chocolate is traditionally matched with Port, Sherry and Sauternes, and not dry wines. The pairings work. They make sense. There's a synergy there, a harmony, a fusion of flavours. I'm all for daring pairings, and pushing the creative envelope, but sometimes tradition wins out over innovation.

Dalmore tasting at Selfridges

Tasting season is in full swing. August was painfully quiet, hence the silence on the blog front. My diary was a barren wasteland of blank space, but the dog days are over - September has saved my social life!

Never one to pass up an opportunity to try something new, when an invite for a Dalmore whisky and chocolate tasting at Selfridges pinged into my inbox, it took me all of a minute to reply.

I'm not a huge whisky fan, but I was excited to try the 45-year-old single malt master distiller Richard Paterson was unveiling for the first time. Six whiskies were on show at the Wonder Bar, which will soon play host to a series of Decanter World Wine Awards trophy winning wines. Each was matched with a different chocolate.

First up was the 12-year-old. Cue sniggering from the male members of the group. Dalmore mature their whiskies in old Gonzales Byass Matusalem casks, imbuing the final blend with an attractive nutty finish. The 12-year-old was incredibly approachable, with notes of orange, citrus and aromatic spices, which worked well with the marmalade fueled chocolate.

The 15-year-old had developed further, and was showing hints of dried spices, cinnamon and ginger, which were enhanced by the salted caramel chocolate. Next in line was the 'Gran Reserva', which sounds more like a Rioja than a whisky. It had an opulent nose of roasted coffee and Christmas cake, which fused wonderfully with the ginger dominant Madagascan chocolate.

Soon it was time for the 18-year-old – a whisky with a driving license. Matured in American white oak for most of its life, it's finished off in Sherry wood for the final furlong. Smooth and rounded, it had a potent nose of almonds, vanilla and spice. Having sipped on these bad boys and nibbled copious squares of chocolate, we were summoned to hail the arrival of the master distiller himself, known as 'The Nose'.

A small mustacheod man with a big personality, Paterson oozes charisma and has the mouth of a sailor. He leaps up on a chair and launches into an impassioned speech about his new arrival - the 45-year-old single malt he's christened Aurora, after the goddess of the dawn. Dalmore, he says, is distinguished by the shape of its stills, which he refers to as 'the big bastards'.

At the point of exploding from his own enthusiasm, Paterson uncorks Aurora and pours us all a wee dram. 'Caress it', he urges us, 'make love to it'. At £3,200 a bottle, Paterson puts it in the same quality league as Lafite. 'It's probably the most expensive thing you'll ever have in your mouths ladies', he says with a smirk. Someone nearly chokes, and I'm close to spraying the man next to me. This guy is a riot.

Aurora is seriously good - an attractive amber colour, it has an intoxicating Sherry-like nose of marmalade, maple, caramel, cedar and spice. Paterson tells us to keep it in our mouths for as long as possible to maximise the flavour development. It has a creamy, textured palate layered with citrus and sweet spice, and a cigar-like finish so long it goes into next week. It may have been the chocolate, or Paterson's oratory skills, but I walked out of Selfridges a whisky convert.

Chocolate: raising the bar

It's national chocolate week and the city is buzzing with chocolate themed events, giving me the perfect excuse to indulge for 'research' purposes. I headed down to the Mayfair Hotel for Chocolate Unwrapped, the first event of its kind in the UK dedicated entirely to chocolate.

All of the big names were represented, from Artisan du Chocolat and Rococo to Hotel Chocolat. The fascinating thing for me, aside from getting to compare colours, flavours and textures, was learning about how chocolate is made - the detailed process from 'bean to bar'.

The word chocolate comes from the Nahautl 'xocolãtl', meaning bitter water. It reminded me of when I first got into wine - the excitement of discovering a new world, with its own vocabulary. From conching and winnowing to tempering, chocolate has its own language, which is as foreign as wine speak to the uninitiated.

Comparisons with winemaking kept coming up. As with wine, terroir is crucial in determining the taste and characteristics of the chocolate. Different chocolates actually taste of where they are from. And as with single vineyard wines, single origin chocolates from one plantation produce higher quality chocolate to those from a combination of sites, and companies seem keen to shout about provenance on their labels.

The chocolate making process is also quite similar to winemaking - from the harvesting (twice yearly in May and November) to the fermenting, drying, de-shelling and roasting, through to conching, where the chocolate is ground down, melted and turned with oxygen.

Only three companies in the UK make their chocolate from bean to bar. The rest buy it ready made, which they melt down and add their own flavours to. There seems to be a big debate over cocoa percentages - with 70% seen as the ideal. Some of the chocolatiers argue that it all depends on the bean, and the flavour you are going to blend it with. 'A raspberry chocolate could never stand up against 70% cocoa', one chocolatier insisted. 'The flavour can only come out at 60%'.

Chocolate certainly seems to be raising its game – there is a huge difference in quality between your average bar of Cadburys and the artisanal creations from the likes of Hotel du Chocolat. To reflect this rise in quality, an 'Academy of Chocolate' has been set up to promote fine chocolate in the UK and honour the best in chocolate making in their annual Academy of Chocolate Awards, much like our Decanter World Wine Awards.

Top 5 chocolates of the day -

Sir Hans Sloane drinking chocolate, which I tried in pellet form – made from chocolate spun around a single grain of sugar, it had a lovely crunchy, almost biscuity texture.

Pacari Raw Chocolate - 100% unprocessed cocoa made from cocoa powder, cocoa butter and nothing else. It was surprisingly smooth and, I'm told, rich in antioxidants.

Artisan du Chocolat salted caramel - their best seller, these dusted truffles burst in the mouth, filling it with delicious oozing salty caramel.

Scand Choco white chocolate made with goats milk - not the tastiest chocolate of the day, but wins points for individuality. Tastes of sweet goats cheese, which is confusing for the palate.

Rococo Darjeeling chocolate - dusted with gold, real perfume is added in order to achieve the strong Darjeeling flavour - this is apparently top secret.

Weird fact of the day: monkeys love the sweet white pulp from cocoa pods.