This App Will Help
You Find the Perfect Wine to Pair With Your Halloween Candy
Vivino's new guide turns trick-or-treating into an epicurean event
Oenophiles with a sweet tooth should find the Candy and Wine
Match Maker useful.
Photo Illustration: Dianna
McDougall; Source: Getty Images
Kids are the primary collectors of Halloween candy, but everyone
knows it's the adults who determine how the sweets are purchased, distributed
and consumed. According to the National Confectioners Association, 84 percent
of adults will hand out candy at the front door this Halloween, and 41 percent
of them will munch on some while they wait for trick-or-treaters. A whopping 90
percent of adults admit to pilfering their own kids' Halloween candy and, of
course, it's adults who'll drop the $2.1 billion to buy treats in the first
place.
Yes, adults do a lot of things
with Halloween candy, but here's one thing they never seem to do: look for a
decent pinot grigio or chardonnay to pair it with.
Well, now they can: Vivino, the
popular app for wine enthusiasts, has just released its second annual Candy and
Wine Match Maker (see chart below), an easy guide for pairing Halloween candy
with the perfect vintage.
"Halloween is so focused on
kids, but there are parents out there. And I'm sure that some of them wouldn't
mind having a glass of wine," Vivino's vp of marketing Stephen Favrot told
Adweek. "This is a perfect excuse for them."
Billed as a "Halloween
survival guide for adults," Vivino's chart lists 14 popular Halloween
candies in the left column (Tootsie Rolls, M&Ms, Skittles—all the heavy hitters are
there.) Users can then follow leader lines to a variety of wines organized by
category.
For example, the light, sweet and
crispy flavor profile of a Kit Kat bar would pair nicely with medium reds like
a zinfandel or a Grenache. Kit Kats also go well with sparkling wines—try a
Champagne, prosecco or sparkling rose.
As you might imagine, producing
such a comprehensive chart took enormous dedication. "We ate a fair share
of candy," Favrot said. Basically, the Vivino tasters looked for the same
flavor notes found in main-dish entrées and matched them using their experienced
palates. The house staff then checked its results with some handpicked
oenophiles in its user base of 11.4 million.
Because Vivino's app gives
crowd-sourced advice on buying wine, its pairing guide does not mention brands;
the app created its Halloween candy chart solely to spotlight its expertise.
"We let the user pick what brand he wants," Favrot said, "We
give them the guidelines."
Tart-flavored candies proved
especially hard to match. "Some of the Starburst flavors?" Favrot
said. "Man, that was tough—and Sour Patch Kids, too."
Sour Patch Kids doesn't appear on
the pairing list, in fact. But Starburst can be safely washed down with a nice
Moscato or Riesling.
