The Grown-Up Halloween: Black Wines, Dark Chocolate and Cocktails After Dark

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By the end of October the light goes early and the wine list should follow it. Halloween, stripped of its plastic, is an invitation to drink darkly, and a proper Halloween wine pairing begins with colour: wines so deep in colour they stain the glass, fortified bottles that taste of fig and cocoa, and cocktails built on bitter liqueurs and blood orange. Leave the costumes to the children. This is a night for candles, a cheese knife and a bar of 70 per cent.

The Black Wines

Start with the wines that earned their reputations by colour alone.

Cahors was sold in medieval London as “the black wine”, and Malbec from its home on the Lot still delivers the darkest, most tannic expression of the grape. It is firmer and more savoury than Mendoza, with sour cherry, graphite and an iron edge that wants roast meat or a wedge of aged Comté.

• Clos Triguedina “The New Black Wine” — the Baldès family revived the historic practice of concentrating the grapes before fermentation, as the old black wine of Cahors was made; the result is opaque and plush. Shop it at Wine.com
• Château du Cèdre “Le Cèdre” — Pascal Verhaeghe’s flagship, powerful but polished, from limestone and clay terraces. Shop it at Wine.com

Amarone della Valpolicella brings the theatre. Corvina, Corvinone and Rondinella grapes dry for months before pressing, losing water and gaining sugar, glycerol and a flavour of dried cherry and bitter chocolate. Fermented dry, it lands at 15 to 16 per cent alcohol with a velvet texture that makes it the obvious bridge to the dessert table. Santé covered the method and the producers in depth in its Wine A-to-Z series on Substack.

• Allegrini Amarone della Valpolicella Classico — focused, clean-lined, a benchmark. Shop it at Wine.com
• Bertani Amarone della Valpolicella Classico — released late, traditional, drier and more savoury than most. Shop it at Wine.com

Saperavi, Georgia’s great red grape, is one of the few teinturier varieties prized for quality: its flesh is red as well as its skin. Expect blackberry, plum and bright acidity, often from amphora-like qvevri.

• Pheasant’s Tears Saperavi — Kakheti fruit, fermented in qvevri, wild and vivid. Shop it at Wine.com

And Port, the dark wine the English have drunk for three centuries, needs no introduction. For a party, a ruby reserve does the job; Santé’s guide to Port season covers the styles, and the Douro entry in the Substack series explains where the best of it comes from.

• Graham’s Six Grapes Reserve Port — dense, sweet black fruit, built for chocolate. Shop it at Wine.com

A Chocolate-and-Wine Tasting

Chocolate is a difficult partner. Its fat coats the palate, its bitterness strips fruit from dry red wine, and its sweetness makes most table wines taste thin and sour. The rule that solves it: the wine must be at least as sweet as the chocolate, and its weight should match the chocolate’s intensity. That is why the fortified and sweet wines of southern France, Iberia and Piedmont do the work so well.

Set out five chocolates from light to dark and pour small measures, 40 to 50 ml each.

• Milk chocolate with hazelnut + Brachetto d’Acqui. Piedmont’s lightly sparkling red is low in alcohol, sweet and perfumed with strawberry and rose. The bubbles cut the milk fat. Banfi Rosa Regale is the best-known. Shop it at Wine.com
• Milk chocolate with caramel + tawny Port. Wood-aged tawny turns to walnut, toffee and orange peel, which meets caramel flavour for flavour. Taylor’s 20 Year Old Tawny. Shop it at Wine.com
• Dark chocolate, 60–70 per cent + Banyuls. Grenache from the schist terraces above the Mediterranean, fortified during fermentation. A young rimage Banyuls keeps its black-cherry fruit and is the classic French answer to dark chocolate. Domaine La Tour Vieille Banyuls Rimage. Shop it at Wine.com
• Dark chocolate, 70–80 per cent + Maury. Banyuls’ inland neighbour, also Grenache, often more structured. Mas Amiel Maury Vintage has the tannin to stand up to serious cacao. Shop it at Wine.com
• Chocolate with dried fruit, or a chocolate tart + Pedro Ximénez. PX sherry is sun-dried grapes in liquid form: raisin, date, molasses, coffee. It is the one wine sweet enough for the richest chocolate desserts. Lustau San Emilio Pedro Ximénez. Shop it at Wine.com

Serve the fortified wines lightly cool, around 14–16°C, and the Brachetto well chilled. Water and plain crackers between rounds keep palates fresh.

Halloween-Hued Cocktails, Done Properly

Food colouring and dry-ice gimmicks are for amateurs. The darkest classic cocktails already look the part.

• Blood and Sand. Equal parts blended Scotch, sweet vermouth, cherry Heering and fresh orange juice, shaken hard. Use blood orange in season for a deeper red. Named for Rudolph Valentino’s 1922 bullfighting film and still underrated.
• Black Manhattan. Two parts rye, one part Averna, two dashes Angostura and one of orange bitters, stirred and strained over a brandied cherry. The amaro turns the drink nearly black and adds a bittersweet, cola-like depth.
• Corpse Reviver No. 2. Gin, Cointreau, Lillet Blanc and lemon juice in equal parts, with an absinthe rinse. Pale and ghostly, it is the right aperitif before the darker pours.
• Port and tonic, after dark. Swap the usual white Port for a ruby, top with a good tonic and a twist of orange. Simple, low in alcohol, the colour of garnet.

Candy, With a Wink

The trick-or-treat bowl deserves a pairing too, and some of these work better than they should. For the jack-o’-lantern itself, see our pumpkin and wine pairing guide.

• Peanut butter cups + tawny Port. Salt, roasted nut and caramel; the tawny’s walnut notes complete it.
• Candy corn + Moscato d’Asti. Honey, vanilla and sugar meet a lightly fizzy, grapey wine that lifts rather than cloys.
• Chocolate-covered caramel bars + oloroso-leaning sweet sherry or PX. Dried fruit and toffee on both sides.
• Dark chocolate-covered cherries + Amarone. The one candy that suits a dry red, because the wine already tastes of dried cherry and cocoa.
• Sour gummies + off-dry Riesling. High acidity answers high acidity. A Mosel Kabinett will make you rethink the combination.

How to Host a Halloween Wine Pairing

A Halloween wine pairing works best kept small: six to eight guests, a long table, low light. Pour the black wines with something savoury—charcuterie, a slow-cooked ragù, aged cheese—then move to the chocolate flight and finish with a stirred cocktail. Buy half-bottles of the fortified wines where you can; opened Port and PX keep for weeks, but Brachetto and Moscato should be finished on the night.