The world is awash in boutique wine, craft beers, herbs and spices galore. Some call it the Food Network effect. One of wine’s best friends, chocolate, has evolved with a similar Renaissance.

“I think over the past 15 years there has been an evolution of foods, in general, and specialty foods,” said Indianapolis chocolatier Elizabeth Garber. “It has happened to cheese, with craft beer, and even wine. Chocolate has done that too.

“Chocolate has been around for ever and ever, but then you started getting people specializing in the craft of chocolate and the higher quality and the artistic side of chocolate. People started creating it more visually and it became more about the palate. Now it’s what flavor profile is in the chocolate and what works well with chocolate. Today you can find spices and things like that in chocolate products.”

Wine and chocolate have been a natural pairing for a long, long time but it’s not as simple as grabbing a bottle or wine and a chocolate bar. There are far too many options not to explore the possibilities.

Chocolatier Elizabeth Garber

“There are levels and strengths in terms of sweetness,” Garber said. “A white chocolate is going to be sweeter because it has a lot more sugar in it.  There are some grades of milk chocolate that sweetness depends on the amount of sugar, milk and cacao in the chocolate. Then you get in to darks which are going to get more bittersweet, though you can have really sweet dark chocolate too.

The higher the percentage of cacao you have on a bar means more cacao and less sugar. Garber explains the 80 percent you see on a chocolate bar means 80 percent cacao and 20 percent sugar, cacao butter and other stuff.”

And simply enough the more bold the chocolate, the bigger red wine you’re going to want to pair with the sweet treat. Chocolate ranging from 60-75 percent cacao pairs great with big red wines. Any bold red wine will do but experimenting will help you find your favorites.

But chocolate today is more than a plain chocolate bar. “We do a cinnamon basil and it might go well with one thing versus another,” Garber said. “A milk chocolate could be paired with a Chardonnay or whites. Sometime that sweet white wine with a honey/lavender truffle is a great pairing. A sweet floral chocolate might pair better with white than just a red. So many people just think red wine with chocolate but you can mix it up.”

Garber has been a chocolatier since 1994. She started in her home and then opened a business just south of Indianapolis. She now has a sizable shop in Indianapolis’ trendy Mass Ave district called “The Best Chocolate in Town.”

She mixes all sorts of spices, fruit, and even beer in her truffles to challenge her customer’s base palate. “There has been this slow evolution going on,” she said. “It’s sort of like jams and jelly; it used to be just grape and strawberry. Now you have pepper jellies and all sorts of combinations. So now chocolate has evolved and continues to expand in new directions.

Flavored truffles give wine fans a chance to really experiment. Boutique chocolate shops have popped up in cities of all size. Chocolate and wine is a very seductive treat for Valentine’s Day!

Howard’s Pick: Try a 70 percent Cacao Truffle with hints of coffee with a big fruity Zinfandel Delightful!

Howard W. Hewitt, Crawfordsville, IN., writes every other week for 22 newspapers in three states. Reach him at: hewitthoward@gmail.com

I haven’t really pitched the column recently but had an old newspaper/editor friend reach out to me over the weekend wanting to add Grape Sense to his newspaper.

Editor Randy Renfeld, who once worked for me elsewhere, is adding Grape Sense to the New Castle daily.

Now instead of “nearly” 300,000 homes monthly I can say “more than” 300,000 homes monthly.

Thanks Randy and welcome aboard New Castle!

Send comment or questions to: hewitthoward@gmail.com

Writing about the latest wine topic is a sure way to drive blog numbers. Wine seminars, veteran wine writers, and more advise the first step for building an audience is writing about the lastest wine news and trends.

I do that some, but not as often as I know I should.

As a former news guy, I get it. But the wine writing community, through my limited exposure, spends too much time writing for each other and not enough time writing for the consumer. And, some of the current topics aren’t all that interesting to me nor do I believe they’d be interesting to the average wine consumer.

The latest fuss is about a Canadian wine writer who allegedly re-published other writers’ wine reviews and required wineries to subscribe to a pay website for their wines to be reviewed.

I could use the name, everyone else has, but hey – the writer stiffed me – twice!

If either of those charges are true, and I’m certainly not here to substantiate or deny, it is really bad practices and worthy of some outrage. But I’ve found too many wine writers more than a little self-serving, self important, and plain ol’ spoiled.

The Canadian writer reached out to me about a year ago promoting a new book. Value wine is a frequent topic for the writer so I agreed to a phone interview. The writer has a significant national profile and name recognition so my thinking was it would be good for this blog or my newspaper column. An appointment was made but no phone call came that day. A second appointment was made, and astonishingly, no phone call came. That was my first introduction to the self important wine community too busy to keep their own appointments.

Wine writers are flown around the world at no cost to be wined and dined in a first-class manner. On one European trip last year I witnessed a fellow wine writer – with national profile – be very rude to our hosts, our guide, and the rest of us on the trip.

Going on these free junkets shouldn’t mean writers are hacks or mouth pieces for the marketing agencies that arrange the trips nor the wine regions paying the bill.  I learned a bit about the ethics of such trips from a guy I really respect who also happens to be a lawyer. His advice was to go on the trip, make no promises, and be a good guest.

When approached for a wine press trip, and full disclosure is I traveled to France three times last year on press trips, I promise nothing. But I also note I have four writing outlets and if I go to any wine region I can’t imagine NOT writing about the wine, the region, and the experience.

The ethics of wine writing comes back to the first great piece of management advice I’ve ever received – “just do the right thing.”

The real reward of wine writing!

So yes, the free trips to wine regions isn’t a bad gig. But there are other rewards far less tangible but just as memorable.

Over the weekend I had a utility issue to resolve and went to the office where I could get it fixed. While getting my bill corrected, a young man struck up a conversation about wine not knowing I was a wine writer. When I told him about this blog and my newspaper column, his excitement over a little advice and direction reminded me of the joy of sharing what I do know about wine.

I gave him some recommendations and guidance, a wine business card, and he was one darn happy camper.

Sometimes the little things are just as much a reward as the big things.

Maybe some of those veteran wine writers need to be reminded of that!

Send comment or questions to: hewitthoward@gmail.com