Last week, I enjoyed National Wine Day in style at Enso Urban Winery in Southeast Portland. In celebration, Enso Winery partnered with Bissinger’s Chocolate, a 350 year old French chocolate company for an evening of decadence and enjoyable conversation with several other writers and bloggers. They dubbed it “Better Together: Chocolate + Wine”
The event planning company, Revolution PR did an excellent job of promoting the event and the overall layout and atmosphere. They really went far and above to make each person feel welcome, and they did a REALLY good job of explaining each wine, the history of each wine, and why they paired it with a certain chocolate. In the same vein, they explained Bissinger’s rich history and embraced a sense of pride as they told the story behind each chocolate. In short, it felt like an exclusive, yet non-pretentious event.
For the event itself, we used Enso’s back tasting room for our soiree, and they treated us to 5 types of wine as well as a lovely assortment of cheeses and snacks in between each tasting. You really can’t go wrong with a bunch of foodies when you throw chocolate, wine, and cheese into the mix. As mentioned above and as you can see in the picture below, they pulled out all of the stops and provided us with excellent and thoughtful pairings for each chocolate. I won’t lie…I found myself going back for seconds…and thirds…and fourths for each one. The Dark Almond and Malbec pairing (pairing number two) won me over in about two seconds. The wine was good enough as it is, but the wine coupled with that…mmmm..it was delicious. I highly recommend that pairing. My second favorite was the Dulce De Leche – it had a really smooth taste (if you can describe chocolate that way) and the Grenache made me want to have more.
In all, I really like these types of events – I meet other writers, passionate marketing folks, and I learn a ton about wine and chocolate!
