Forget wine and cheese parties. In Italy, chocolatiers and enoteche (wine shops) are holding degustazione di vino (wine tastings) with a side of chocolate. Crash courses are no longer limited to wine or olive oil. Chocolate is premiering in the “gastronomic parlor game,” wrote the New York Times in the 2003 article “Hints of Wine? Chocolate Enters the Tasting Room.”

The marriage of the fermented grape with the cacao based candy can be heavenly, if you know how to correctly mate those two distinct flavors. Piero Ballerini, owner of family run Ballerini Pasticceria in Florence, learned his cocoacraft from his late father. The confectionary shop leaned more toward pastries when he began working there at 15. But Ballerini decided to specialize in chocolate.