6 Chocolate-Flavored Wines, Ranked Worst To Best

Chocolate with wine is a classic pairing. Whether you're baking boozy cupcakes or matching a nice bottle of red with your favorite dark chocolate dessert, the flavors dance together in perfect harmony. But combining the two in one bottle is a stigmatized and even frowned-upon affair that you might have to explain or justify to a certain crowd. I have to admit, I was a bit nervous to embark upon this chocolate-wine tasting journey, expecting the worst yet hoping for the best — and I was pleasantly surprised. The key is in changing your mindset; these are not bottles of wine designed to be all about the grape, but rather a special treat you can enjoy after dinner for a dessert all unto itself. 

Chocolate wine falls into two categories: with cream or without cream. You'll notice that the appearance of these wines ranges from dark brown to translucent red. Three of the bottles listed come with cream, and three are more traditional wines, sans cream, but with chocolate flavoring added. Each category, I found, serves its own purpose. The creamy varieties aren't that enjoyable sipped cold from a glass (although you should keep them cold to preserve the dairy), but they are fantastic when viewed as a pre-spiked hot cocoa you can keep in a thermos and enjoy with some coffee as you peruse a holiday market this Christmas season. The more traditional red wines imbued with flavor are perfect for sipping after a rich dinner when you want to clear your palate with something sweet. If you've been looking for a way to satisfy two cravings at once, you can use this guide to find the perfect chocolate wine for your sipping needs. 

Some recommendations are based on first-hand impressions of promotional materials and products provided by the manufacturer/distributor/etc.

Cocoa di Vine is a creamy, milk chocolate color. There's so much cream that chunks of it float in the bottle, requiring a vigorous shake before pouring to smooth things out. It has an alcohol content of 14%, which is readily noticeable on the nose. While sniffing your wine before drinking is standard — as the smell of wine is nearly as enjoyable as its flavor — with this one, you may want to avoid breathing it in too deeply, to save your nostrils from being lit on fire.

The taste is about what you'd expect from the appearance — it's creamy, with a nice chocolate flavor, and clearly contains alcohol. Calling this wine seems like a stretch, although that is the base. It feels wrong to consume it out of a glass, and I found that it tastes much better when heated in a mug and combined with hot cocoa (a generous portion of which will slow down your buzz and help to mask the strong taste of alcohol). If cocoa is the drink of choice, it's the perfect time to check out our ranking of popular hot cocoa brands and decide which one will best make your spiked-cocoa dreams come true.

I've ranked this one last place because the chocolate flavor just wasn't as rich and smooth as that of the other cream-based bottles. That, combined with the off-putting, rubbing-alcohol smell, made it an easy choice. However, if you enjoy milk chocolate more than dark, you may find you prefer this brand.

I love the bitterness and rich tannins of chocolate, which means I almost always eat my chocolate as dark as I can find it. Thus, I'm inevitably biased when it comes to the dark chocolate choice in comparison to a more creamy option. ChocoVine does have a regular, more milky chocolate bottle of wine, but this one came higher reviewed and just looked better.

It has an inviting dark chocolate color, and smells like Hershey's syrup with a hint of a future hangover. When I first tasted it cold, I was a bit appalled. Even though I like my coffee bitter and my drinks strong, but this was just too much. But once heated in a mug I saw the potential. It tastes like a nice cup of hot cocoa that's been spiked with Bailey's (which is a great way to take your chocolate cake up a notch). It's velvety and smooth and is conveniently bottled so that you don't even necessarily need cocoa powder, you could just add a generous splash to a cup of coffee with a bit of whipped cream and voila — you've got a nice weekend treat.

It is quite similar to Cocoa di Vine, but this dark chocolate flavor has a more approachable aroma, a smooth, creamy taste, and a stronger chocolate essence that makes it all around a more enjoyable product.

Crema Nobile, the last of the three cream-added chocolate wines I'm tasting for this ranking, comes in a sleek bottle with an appealing design. The bottle is made of tinted glass, but once poured, you can observe the drink's rich, chocolate color. The label declares that it's made with grape wine, alcohol, toffee flavors, and cream. Of the cream-based chocolate wines, this one definitely has the most appealing smell — the alcohol doesn't smack you in the face, although you can tell it's there, the chocolate is rich and decadent, and there's a faint hint of toffee (which is separated from caramel with one key difference).

Similar to ChocoVine and Cocoa di Vine, this one is definitely better served hot, although it does taste better than the others when they're cold. Perhaps in the summertime I would enjoy this in an iced cocktail, almost similar to an adult chocolate milk. It would also be delicious poured over ice cream or added to an affogato, but this time of year, combining it with coffee or hot chocolate and a whipped-cream topping makes a great holiday drink.

The toffee flavoring is a nice touch, adding a bit of nutty, caramel complexity to the chocolate flavor, and sets it apart from the other cream-based chocolate wines. Although I love the rich dark chocolate of ChocoVine, this one has that, plus a little something extra.

We've now reached the end of the cream-based chocolate wine portion of this ranking. While I did enjoy them, and can see the benefit in having a bottle of Crema Nobile or dark chocolate ChocoVine on hand for hot-cocoa cocktails, I felt that the red wines that incorporated chocolate deserved a bit more acclaim. A wine with cream in it just doesn't feel quite like, well, wine, so much as one that has a recognizable red color.

This brings me to the elegant bottle of Trentadue Chocolate Amore, an 18% chocolate flavored dessert wine. To me, a port-style wine infused with chocolate flavor just makes sense. If I was going to add chocolate to a wine, it would be one that is naturally sweet with some toffee and rich fruit notes (depending on the kind of port).

This one has a deep purple color and syrupy, slow-moving legs that are characteristic of a dessert wine. It has a sweet smell, rich with dark cherries and ripe blackberries, and a full-bodied mouthfeel to match. It's a very approachable port-style wine. Sweet, fruity, with just a hint of tannin drying your mouth at the end. But I don't really get chocolate. In terms of affordable dessert wines that will be easy to pair, it's not bad. But there were a few other wines I tried that really brought the chocolate flavor to life, and if we're ranking chocolate wines specifically, then that deserves some credit.

The final two wines in this ranking came very, very close. They are both wines that I wouldn't be ashamed to buy — what can I say, they taste good. A glass enjoyed as a dessert after a hearty dinner is a delightful way to end a meal, and very convenient if you're craving chocolate but don't have any on hand.

This Cooper's Hawk Vin Chocolat Noir has a translucent, dark ruby color. It immediately smells like chocolate shavings with ripe cherry and raspberry — juicy on the nose and the palate. It has a light mouthfeel, a very sweet taste, and is heavier on the ripe red fruits than on the chocolate, although these flavors combine very well. This is the reason why, in the end, I had to rank it second. It's just a little light on the chocolate, but very drinkable nonetheless.

Although I didn't rank it first, I would still enjoy a glass of this wine for dessert. Plus, if you're craving something with a bit more complexity, Cooper's Hawk also has a chocolate almond flavored wine that is equally as delicious but with a bit of nuttiness to balance out the sweetness.

How fitting that the first place chocolate-flavored wine (for me, at least) is called Chocolate Shop. It's an appropriate name — when it came down to the wine that best balanced the chocolate flavoring with a red wine, this one undoubtedly took the cake.

It has a translucent, burgundy color, slightly more brown in hue than the Vin Chocolat Noir. The smell is unmistakably chocolate-forward. It's a rather odd sensation to look into a glass of red wine and smell a chocolate truffle — perhaps a cherry-filled truffle that immediately conjures visions of Cherry Garcia ice cream (one of Ben & Jerry's long-running flavors). It's light-bodied, drinkable, and not overwhelmingly sweet.

This is exactly what I was hoping for in a chocolate wine, the best-case scenario I imagined. A juicy, sweet red wine with an emphasis on red fruits, a light body, and just enough chocolate that you're very aware of what you're drinking. It will satisfy your chocolate craving without overwhelming the palate.

My main judging criterion, when writing this article, was a balance of chocolate flavor in the wines. The cream wines were at the bottom of the ranking because it just seems like a bit of an easy out to add such robust cream and chocolate quantities to wine, sometimes with a bit of fortifying, and still call it wine. I wanted to try a wine that looks like wine but brings that chocolate flavor to the front. Nonetheless, consider the two categories separately. Although I wouldn't treat the Crema Nobile as a wine, I would certainly enjoy it in a hot mug from time to time.

To make my selection of wines, I looked for those that were pretty easy to find, as well as a few that were a bit more niche. There aren't very many brands of chocolate wine, so this list encompasses most (but not quite all) of the brands available in the United States.

In terms of temperature, I initially started by chilling all of the cream-based wines, given that they do have dairy and should be refrigerated after opening. But upon tasting, I quickly discovered that they taste much better served warm, and thus tasted all of them both chilled and heated. The red and dessert wines I consumed at cellar temp (about 55 degrees Fahrenheit) in an appropriate glass.