What Wine Pairs with Milk Chocolate?

Cadbury Creme Eggs are a tradition you never outgrow. But this year, instead of gorging on eggs and dreaming of wine, go ahead and pair your favorite Easter treat with wine. You can call it brunch. I won’t tell.

The key to pairing wine with Cadbury Creme Eggs is understanding that this hallowed Easter candy is about as sugary a treat as you can find. In general, wine doesn’t pair well with sugar, so your options are limited. Dry wines just won’t work, and some of the most revered dessert wines won’t pair well with the milk chocolate. The best wine to pair with this milk-chocolate Easter candy is demi-sec champagne.

The official term for Champagne is Sparkling Wine. In order to be considered Champagne, it has to come from the Champagne region of France. (Think about Kleenex. Even though we all call every brand of facial tissue on the market Kleenex, there is only one true Kleenex; everything else is facial tissue.)

Sparkling wine can be challenging to understand because of the variety of words and languages on labels from countries around the world. In another more serious post, I might create an Excel chart with the various words, but here is the gist… you are looking for a sparkling wine that is semi-sweet. On a bottle of French Champagne, the word you’re looking for is demi-sec. The literal translation is half-dry but the actual meaning is half-sweet. Make sense?

Demi-sec is the French term since we’re only chatting about Champagne from France today. (If I gave you labeling information for all Sparkling Wine from around the world, this blog would be the length of War and Peace.) If you’re curious about how to determine the best Cava from Spain or Prosecco from Italy, just use Google Translate to find a half-dry or half-sweet bubbly. (If I can use Google Translate to date my now-husband when he didn’t speak English, you can use it to find a bottle of bubbly. But that’s a blog for another day.)

If you serve something low in sugar for dessert—such as dark chocolate or a low-sugar fruit tart—there will be other pairings that work better. A rich port is amazing with dark chocolate, and an ice wine or a Sauternes will make your fruit tart taste like heaven. But when serving a milk chocolate, sugary treat—such as cake, doughnuts or candy—the Demi-Sec (half-sweet) wine will pair best. So for this very unusual Easter in quarantine, pair your coveted Cadbury Creme Eggs with Demi-Sec Champagne. Try it and let me know what you think.

Happy wine pairing, and Happy Easter!