You’re surrounded by Easter candy (it happens earlier and earlier every year). And I’m surrounded by wine. This is a post about how to pair wine with easter candy like a pro.
So we ran out to buy Peeps, Cadbury Creme Eggs, chocolate bunnies and other seasonal treats that only appear at this special time of year, and we started drinking early in the morning.
The full Easter candy and wine tasting
If you have half an hour and want to watch the full tasting, here it is in all its glory…
What we recommend:
| Classic Peeps (classic) | Peeps are undeniably sweet and fluffy – so I’d pour a wine that is also sweet and not too structured. I love Prosecco styled wines for this. Sparkling with a touch of sweetness that doesn’t take itself too seriously. | Keith Hock Bollicine in Bianco (our newest sparkling winemaker!) |
| Flavored Peeps (Blue raspberry) | Flavored peeps are tough because the flavors are so big and artificial. We recommend a big wine with some sweetness and some less artificial, more natural fruit flavors to pair. For example, a Blue Raspberry Peep with a Ruby Port. The blue raspberry has this sweet fake berry flavor and the ruby port has an intensely deep REAL berry flavor so they go great together. | Montaria Ruby Port |
| Milk Chocolate bunny (Russel Stover) | Chocolate is a little easier to pair because if you have a deep red wine you love and a rich delicious chocolate you love, you’re gold. My personal penchant is to take a big red with some sweetness. I turned to a ripasso style Italian wine called Appassimento which is extra ripe and almost raisiny delicious because the winemaker sun-dried the grapes to make them more concentrated and extremely flavored. It’s rich and goes well with chocolate (the darker and richer the better). | Christian Patat Appassimento |
| Resse’s Peanut Butter eggs | Sherry-styled wines are a classic pairing for peanut butter and this was a wildly successful pairing. The peanut butter egg is delicious and coats your mouth with sweet chocolate and peanut butter is stuck to the roof of your mouth and a nice sip of a ROX Late Harvest has this refreshing nutty quality (and still some sweetness to pair with the candy) that gets you aching for another bite. | Scott Peterson’s ROX Late Harvest |
| Cadbury Crème | The weirdest pairing we tried – and a wild success. The Cadbury Crème Egg is so sweet and rich that it was hard to pair with another sweet wine. Instead we went with a bone dry Beaujolais called La Rose Pourpre. This deep purple wine is rich and lush and dripping with red fruit like strawberry and raspberry. In this pairing, the wine is almost like a hearty food, the foundation of the meal — and the egg is just a little treat that you take a creamy caramel sip from. | Mickael Lachaud’s La Rose Pourpre |
| Robin Eggs mini | Big intense Petite Sirah that plows over the malt ball flavor and rounds out that rich milk chocolate feeling. Sometimes, Stephen Millier Petite Sirah almost tastes like Cherry Cola so it’s a classic movie theater pairing (malt balls and cherry coke) except now it has wine in it. 🙂 | Stephen Millier Angel’s Reserve Petite Sirah |
| hard boiled egg | What do you do with the actual painted easter eggs? Eggs are breakfast right? So break out the mimosas. Or if OJ isn’t your thing, pour a glass of Champagne and stick some nice clementine slices in there. One of our customers taught us this trick and I have stopped skipping breakfast all of a sudden. | Moulin Champagne |
It goes without saying, we had a great morning. 😀
The key to a good food and wine pairing
Get a food you like and a wine you like. Share it with people you like. That’s all it takes!
And don’t be afraid to take chances. We offer a full money back guarantee on all our wines (no returns necessary) so that you can take chances and have fun exploring wine. Use that! Be adventurous!
In the video, we try some pairings that didn’t work out so well…especially when we didn’t like the candy to begin with. It’s not the end of the world. Just ask for a refund and pour something else. 🙂
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