Which whisky goes with chocolate?

Match on sweetness: do not let the whisky be sweeter than the chocolate, otherwise you will taste little of the chocolate.

Dark chocolate with a high cocoa percentage is more bitter and fattier than milk chocolate. Milk chocolate and white chocolate already bring a lot of sugar themselves. Therefore start with the chocolate and look for a whisky to go with it, not the other way round. Take a small piece, let it melt and only then take a sip.

A sherry cask has previously held fortified wine from Jerez, and that wine leaves residues in the wood that end up in the whisky during maturation.

The Scotch Whisky Association permits casks that previously held still wine, fortified wine, beer, whisky, grape brandy or rum. Oloroso is a dry sherry that matures oxidatively and usually has 18 to 20 percent alcohol. Pedro Ximénez is a sweet sherry with never less than 250 grams of sugar per litre. Which of the two the cask held is sometimes stated on the label.

A finish means that the whisky spends the last part of its maturation in a different cask than the years before.

The Scotch Whisky Association describes finishing as an extension of maturation, in which the spirit goes into empty casks that previously held other wine or another spirit. A port cask finish or sherry cask finish on the label therefore says something about the last cask, not about the whole maturation. The age on the bottle counts both periods and refers to the youngest component.

First take a small piece of chocolate, let it melt on the tongue and only then take a sip of whisky.

Cocoa butter melts at around body temperature and leaves a thin layer on the tongue, which makes the whisky come across differently afterwards. Conversely, the alcohol overpowers the chocolate. Work from light to heavy: start with the milk chocolate and finish with the darkest bar. Have a glass of water ready to rinse in between.

With dark chocolate, look for a whisky with a sweeter cask influence, and with milk chocolate a whisky that is itself less sweet.

De verhouding weegt zwaarder dan het merk. Een whisky uit een Pedro Ximénez-vat staat tegenover een reep met een hoog cacaopercentage; een droger gerijpte whisky staat tegenover melkchocolade. Wilt u het zeker weten, proef dan twee combinaties naast elkaar. Kom langs aan de Brink in Bathmen; wij zoeken met u mee. Alcohol verkopen wij niet aan wie jonger is dan achttien: NIX18.