Chocolate and custom chocolate give-aways and promotions

By Christen Gruebel

Perfect Pairs

According to Yngrid Bravo, corporate sales marketing manager at Lakewood, New Jersey-based Astor Chocolate, fruit and wine are two of chocolate’s best partners-in-taste. Here are a few tips to share with your end-buyers.

“When pairing chocolate and wine, the latter should be as sweet as the dessert, otherwise it will taste sour, tart or bitter,” she explained. White chocolate, Bravo noted, is a “sweet and buttery pair” with sherry. Milk chocolate works best with pinot noir, merlot or riesling, and dark chocolate strikes a delicious note with a cabernet sauvignon.

On the other hand, “When it comes to fruit pairing, our chef suggests to remember that ‘sweetness already comes from the fruit’ and unlike wine, ‘opposites attract,’” she said. While the subdued flavors of bananas and pears go best with dark chocolate, both milk chocolate and white chocolate work great with strawberries, Bravo affirmed.

WELCOME TO THE big show. That's right. You might want a front-row seat for this.

Like the rest of the population, we here at Promo Marketing love our chocolate. Sure, some of our consumption is "research," but really, when that three o'clock slump hits—nothing pacifies the staff quite like a little bit of the sweet stuff.

The sugar must do wonders for our rhetoric, because once we get our fix, what invariably follows is our classic, oft-argued milk versus dark debate. While this writer is firmly entrenched in the milk-chocolate camp, I'm up against quite a few dark chocolate-devotee coworkers who beg to differ.

We know we're not the only ones who duke this out—and if it's not just us, what about your end-users? We thought it was a worthy exploration into the two schools of thought, so we took it to the experts: What will please everyone's palette?

Milk Chocolate: How Sweet It Is

With an unmatched creaminess and a healthy dash of nostalgia thrown in, milk chocolate is, for many, the quintessential taste when a chocolate craving hits. "If I'm really hungry or having a stressful day, then milk is my choice as I can eat more of it and find it really soothing on the nerves," affirmed Mia Sieben, sales manager for Blaine, Washington-based Chocolate Chocolate.

And it's no wonder. Milk chocolate recalls childhood—when Hershey's ruled and Halloween was the epicenter of our lives. In fact, at Chocolate Chocolate, milk chocolate is the most popular with customers and the "safer" choice for nearly every promotion, she explained. To be exact, Sieben noted, it's "about 70/30 in favor of milk."

But what is it about the taste that makes it such a crowd pleaser? The key is cocoa content, which is the combination of cocoa beans and cocoa butter, she said. Like adding a bit of cream to black coffee, milk tempers cocoa's pronounced flavor. "Milk adds a sense of creamy richness, but not as strong a chocolate flavor," Sieben added. At Chocolate Chocolate, the milk chocolate has 36 percent cocoa content, which leads to a smoother, more mild taste.

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