Chocolate by Waco Winery

Welcome to our first review! So to be quite honest, we went a little overboard with drinking this wine when reviewing it. We literally almost finished the bottle between us, which led me to decide to break open my new fryer and try to make fried chicken while wine-tipsy. Probably one of my greatest ideas. The chicken turned out bomb af, although I ended up covering our counters with tons of flour. ANYWAYS, Bodie described this wine as perfect for wallowing on the couch watching Hallmark movies. It tastes like exactly what you need when you're on your period and just want to lay around eating chocolate and watching bad rom-coms, but like in a good way. However, word of advice, if you drink more than one glass of this, you WILL get a tummy ache. We're not sure if it's the chocolate flavor or the tootsie-roll smell but drink in moderation, despite wanting to drink more cuz it IS good. Just a heads up, we didn't decant this one - it didn't need it.

Name: Chocolate by Waco Winery

Price: $20 from their farmer's market booth in Waco, but you can also buy it at their tasting room and (I think) through their wine club.

Alcohol Content: 12.5%

Residual Sugar: Unfortunately, it was not listed on the bottle.

Vintage: This wasn't listed either :( It's a small and newer winery, so their bottles are limited in information.

TLDR: Yay - in moderation

Winery: Waco Winery is a small local winery right outside of Waco, and tbh their website isn't necessarily a wealth of information. Apparently they used to be a different winery, but were bought out not too long ago, and rebranded into WW. You can see their website here, but their FB page probably has the most information - although it's still not much. They don't sell their wines online, but it looks like they have some sort of wine club. Again, we're super in the dark when it comes to how this winery operates, but we can take solace knowing the grapes are grown in the great state of Texas. The majority of their info surrounds their rooftop wine tasting room with live music in downtown Waco, which we are bummed we didn't experience.

Varietal: We got nothin. I searched all over trying to figure out which grapes they put in this dang wine, and the most info I could fine came from the back of the bottle. Apparently it's a "Grape Wine with natural chocolate and almond flavors." Real detailed, we know. SO this post will obviously not have characteristics of the grape explained. Boo.

Bottle Description: "We love wine. And nothing pairs better with wine than dark chocolate. So we decided to create Chocolate. A beautiful Red wine that starts with the essence of dark chocolate, and finishes with the classic deep Red flavor. We hope you enjoy the fruits of our labor even more than we enjoyed creating it for you. Grape wine with natural chocolate and almond flavors."

Color: Deep violet

Nose: It smells like a straight tootsie roll. Like if you closed your eyes and smelled both, there is no way you'd be able to tell the difference at first whiff. Chocolate is the strongest aroma, with some slight toffee, cranberry, and black currant notes.

Taste: Chocolate tastes like chocolate. It's got medium tannin, so you won't have cottonmouth drinking it, but you'll notice the dry sensation. The acidity is there, but it's mild, so your mouth isn't excessively salivating. The flavor is somewhat angular; you taste it really strong at the tip of your tongue and the back of your mouth. There isn't a strong alcohol burn, and it goes down nicely. It tastes more earthy than fruity. You really start to notice a cranberry flavor the more you taste it.

Finish: This finish is long. It hangs out as an aftertaste for quite a while. My mouth tasted like tootsie rolls the entire time I was frying that chicken. It's not necessarily pleasant after a while, especially since I don't usually eat tootsie rolls.

Sweet: As much as this wine tastes like chocolate, don't eat it with chocolate. It makes the flavors waaay too harsh, and ends up tasting like black currant and black cherry, but in a strong acidic way.

Spicy: It's actually not bad with spicy food. It does make the spicy food burn a little more, but it enhances the spice and hotness in the flavor of the food. It removes the strong chocolate flavor in the wine, and makes those fruit flavors more prominent in the wine.

Salty: I thought it went well with saltiness. It made it slightly more astringent, but the chocolate tasted nice with the salt. Bodie felt like the salt actually neutralized some of the chocolate flavors, and he did not enjoy it as much. Remember, we all have different palates.

Cheese: NOPE. Granted we're just eating it with cheddar, but we recommend you don't. It masked all the flavors in the wine and all you taste is dirt.

Let us know what you think of our review in the comments. We'd love to hear what you like, what you didn't like, or suggestions for other wines to try.