Easter 2013: the best wines to drink with chocolate

Chocolate and wine? Never been sure about this. There are some wines that actually taste of chocolate; super-rich, oaked cabernet francs from Argentina, for instance, can be reminiscent of milk chocolate, and there is a bitter cocoa nib note in some of the carmenère and cabernet sauvignon that comes out of Chile.
Putting these two important food groups (which is how I think of them) together, I sometimes fear it is too much of two good things. A direct route to a migraine? A distraction?
Yes, well. Very many people seem to crave both at once. And it is Easter. There are chocolate bunnies and chocolate eggs to be nibbled (or melted down and turned into desserts). So all right – off we go.
First of all, with sweet food of any kind, look for sweet wines. Many claim that dry red is good with chocolate. In reality it's not just that dry with sweet can feel uncomfortable (the sweet element makes the other seem withered and fatigued); the tannins in the wine emphasise those in the plain chocolate. The result is violent: the oral equivalent of an emergency stop in the outside lane of the motorway at 90mph.
"Tannin in chocolate plus tannin in wine is vile," says the wine and chocolate expert Sarah Jane Evans (yes, I know, and before anyone gets ideas, that job's taken). "But the disaster can be mitigated if you choose a bar or a chocolate that has texture, i.e. nuts, possibly sea salt or a very fine layer of fruit jelly.