Chocolate desserts need really sweet, intensely flavoured wines that are able to cut through the tongue-coating qualities and bitterness of cocoa. Dense, molasses-like fortified sweet wines such as Pedro Ximénez and Australian tokay are perfect: they have just the right strength, weight and concentration. As any sweet tooth will tell you, too, chocolate goes wonderfully well with raisins, which is pretty much what the ultra-ripe pedro or tokay grapes look like before they’re harvested. I have also discovered, after years of research, that tokay has a particular affinity for cooked pears. Unlike muscat, which can be almost raisin-like in its fruit sweetness, tokay wines tend to have a little more of a savoury edge that complements the graininess you find in the texture of pear. Incidentally, as a result of a trade agreement with Europe, Australian winemakers have agreed to stop using the name “tokay” and have dreamt up a very similar alternative: expect to see bottles of “topaque” appearing on your wine shop shelf during the next few years.