Frozen milk chocolate and raspberry cake with Rosa Regale Brachetto d’Acqui

One of the courses at the food and wine workshops I hosted for Irish wine importer Febvre at Drury Buildings in Dublin last week was a frozen milk chocolate and raspberry cake - well, sort of cake. More like a cross between a cake and a mousse.

Chocolate is notoriously tricky with wine, frozen or rather semi-frozen chocolate even more so but I anticipated the raspberries would provide the key to the match.

We tried a rosato frizzante (in effect pink prosecco but we’re not allowed to call it that) but it was too dry. Then for the final workshop we tried a sweeter brachetto d’acqui, the Rosa Regale from Castello Banfi's Vigne Regale which hit the spot perfectly - echoing the raspberry flavour in the dessert in much the same way as a Belgian Frambozen (raspberry beer) would have done. Served in a flute looked very pretty too.

Interestingly the same wine didn’t work nearly as well with the very intense dark chocolate and toasted pistachio cake which was served at the dinner by which it was quite overwhelmed.

A good wine for summer though. Dante Cecchini of Castello Banfi reckons it’s also perfect for Eton mess.

You can buy the Rosa Regale in the UK for £12.89 from allaboutwine.co.uk (by the case) or £13.45 from slurp.co.uk