It's ChocoVine Season!

Definitive proof that the Dutch are up to something.

“The Call of Cthulhu” by H.P. Lovecraft has one of the most bone-chilling opening paragraphs I’ve ever read:

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.”

He was writing, of course, about ChocoVine.

Until recently, I only knew ChocoVine—a cosmically horrible blend of red wine, cream, and “Dutch chocolate”—from the endcaps of Target checkout lines, where bottles would bloom like algae each December.

Then my parents, who hate me, gave me a bottle as a Christmas gag gift—a gift to make me gag. I opened it, because I hate me, too.

Here are some facts about ChocoVine. The name is a portmanteau of “chocolate” and “ravine.” It is 14 percent alcohol by volume and 86 percent cereal milk from a bowl of Count Chocula. The top customer review on Google is “I’ve had worse, but not by much.”

It is also primarily consumed by women, if the gendered ad copy on the website is any indication. The homepage features a photo-mosaic of mostly white women (“sweethearts”) and a lengthy blurb about ChocoVine arranged like a poem but written as a cry for help. Here is a real stanza:

“FOR BEST FRIENDS BEING ALWAYS THERE
FOR MOMS BRINGING KIDS TO TRAINING WITH CARE.”

ChocoVine: Drunk-Drive Bayleigh to Her Flute Lessons.

*eyes Holland suspiciously*

The base wine is allegedly Cabernet Sauvignon, but don’t get your hopes up here. The tasting notes are “fruit” and “milk.”

I had told myself I was going to drink a whole, unadulterated glass to “get the full experience,” but this was a non-starter. I had expected ChocoVine to taste like someone had mixed red wine with chocolate milk. Instead, it tasted like someone had melted a bunch of miscellaneous hard candies into a glass. It was Extremely Sweet and Unsettlingly Creamy (eat your heart out, Jonathan Safran Foer).

I texted my friend Matt, a bartender in Seattle, for ideas on how to use it up. He first suggested I make it into a Mudslide, which seemed tolerable in a fun, trashy way (same). But I don’t own a blender—and I finished off all of the ice cream in our freezer earlier this week to avoid having to think about ChocoVine—so that was a dead end.

His next suggestion was to tamp down the Dutch Espionage Wine’s weapons-grade sweetness with mezcal, coffee, amaro, and mole bitters. This sounded like Bartender Bullshit but yielded a pleasant, non-sugary drink. Recipe below (I used Angostura bitters, because I am a pleb):

Matt’s Enduring Legacy

• 1/2 ounce ChocoVine

• 1/2 ounce Amaro Montenegro

• 1 1/2 ounce brewed coffee

• 1 1/2 ounce mezcal

• Dash bitters

Stir all components together over ice and strain into your most elegant glass.

I forgot to take a nice-looking photo of the cocktail on its own, but you can see it in this picture of me in which I am wearing no makeup and have the hair of a Baroque composer. (#brandbuilding) As you can see, even with only half an ounce of ChocoVine, the drink still looks like milk. The milk is a dominant gene.

Realized after hitting “send” that this photo was clipped from the email version. This loose, freewheeling approach to copyediting is what subscribers crave.

At this point, I had a buzz on and most of a bottle to finish. I was half-tempted to tag in ChocoVine to that viral chocolate-milk-braised chicken recipe, but there are more entertaining ways to ruin a bird.

Instead, I ~Leaned In~ to the ChocoVine’s worst qualities (I assume that’s what the Sheryl Sandberg book is about—giving in to your basest impulses to get ahead in life.) I strode past the hungry blades of the Dutch windmill and gazed directly into its corroded heart.

I went deeper—into the chocolate ravine.

I made a ChocoVine bundt cake.

I also made two ChocoVine espresso martinis.

Make no mistake: this is a sweet cake. But an equal amount of brewed coffee to ChocoVine in the batter keeps things out of Hallmark Original Movie territory. The resulting cake is fudgy, dense, and dank.

Look…………………………………………the cake was good, folks. I would make this cake again. I won’t, inshallah, because I don’t intend to invite another bottle from Wonka Estates into my home. But if you have been similarly victimized/lured by the Target endcap, this is your best bet for turning a curse into a cake.

I even wrote some new ad copy for the ChocoVine website. I think I’ve done a pretty good job internalizing the brand voice.

CHOCOVINE MAKES TASTY CAKE
YOU CAN EAT IT WITH A RAKE

A SMALL RAKE, MADE FOR A WOMAN’S HANDS.

ChocoVine Bundt Cake

• 1 cup (two sticks / 16 tablespoons) melted butter

• 1/2 cup Dutch process cocoa (I like Cacao Barry Extra Brute)

• 3/4 cup strong brewed coffee

• 3/4 cup ChocoVine

• 1 tsp kosher salt

• 2 cups granulated white sugar

• 2 cups all-purpose flour

• 2 eggs

• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder

• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahreheit. Whisk together melted butter, cocoa powder, and coffee in a medium-sized bowl. Let the mixture cool for a few minutes. Once cool, add the ChocoVine and whisk again to combine.

2. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, and baking soda.

3. Add chocolate mixture to bowl with dry ingredients and stir until thoroughly combined.

4. Crack two eggs into the bowl and beat them into the mixture until it’s homogenous.

5. Pour mix into a greased and floured Bundt pan and bake ~50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean (a couple crumbs clinging to the toothpick are fine, you just don’t want it to come out wet.) Cool in the pan before inverting and slicing.

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