Chocovine looks like Irish cream liqueurs. Minty milk chocolate nose. A rich entry leads a lush, velvety, full-bodied palate. Creamy, sweet, flavorful finish. A chocolate and red wine blend that winds up like a thicker version of Baileys. It’s a long-standing Taste Test rule that two great tastes don’t always taste great together, particularly when one of those tastes is alcohol.
Taste: The immediate reaction to Chocovine was pretty much “uuugggh!” across the board, though once we recalibrated our taste buds into liqueur mode rather than wine mode, it became a little less offensive. (Our resident girly-drink enthusiast, Josh, actually polished off the bottle.) Chocovine tastes absolutely nothing like wine—even the aftertaste has a burn that’s more reminiscent of vodka than anything else. A better comparison point would be Bailey’s, or an extremely sweet chocolate liqueur. The stuff is far too sugary and thick to drink even a few sips of by itself—much less a full wine glass—but it could conceivably be mixed up into a fancy-pants chocolate martini of some sort. Though considering Chocovine has the same alcohol content as wine (just 14 percent), dedicated drunkards would probably be better off with a liqueur.
Not surprisingly, the strawberry Oreos were a much bigger hit, though everyone agreed they couldn’t come close to the beloved original. However, like the Chocovine, it seems like these might be best in small doses: While most people had an initial response of “mmm, cookie good, nom,” subsequent Oreos started to seem intensely sweet, and the extra-creamy filling became little overpowering. The strawberry taste is also very artificial—several tasters likened it to Crunch Berries—which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it can become cloying after a while.
(And yes, of course we dipped the strawberry Oreos in the Chocovine.)
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