No Valentine's Day is complete without a sweet wine that goes perfectly with chocolate. The ripe, velvety-textured 2010 Quady Elysium, with its rose petal and fig aromas and intense, richly fruity litchee-and-berry flavors is one of them. The label sports a colorful heart just right for this romantic day; the name Elysium means paradise in Greek. And the wine is available in half bottles -- the ideal size for two people at the end of a celebratory dinner. Best of all, these cost under $15.

Founded in the 1970s, the Quady Winery hasn't wavered from its specialization in dessert wines made from unusual grape varietals, though in recent years it's added excellent sweet and dry vermouths and a dry sherry-style bottling to its offerings.

Andrew Quady started out making a port-style wine in a small winery he and his wife built behind their house. He launched his first dessert wine, Essensia, made from Orange Muscat grapes, in 1981, beginning his dedication to rare, unappreciated Muscat varieties. When Quady got his hands on some Black Muscat grapes in 1983, he used them to create Elysium. Surprisingly Black Muscat, one of the few Muscats with a black skin, is thought of as a table grape in Europe, where it's called Muscat Hamburg.

Elysium is a lightly fortified wine, which means that a small amount of spirit, like grape brandy, is added to stop the fermentation process in which yeast turns sugar into alcohol. The brandy kills the yeast, leaving some residual sugar, so the wine that results is both sweet and higher in alcohol, the way Port is.

The quest to find the right wine to pair with chocolate is a recent phenomenon, surely inspired by the rise of so many great bean-to-bar American chocolatiers, who've popularized the dark, rich, bittersweet stuff that goes best with wine.

Quady will be showing their wines at the Madera Wine Trail's 11th annual "Wine and Chocolate Weekend" (www.maderawinetrail.com) on Feb. 11 and 12. But you can make the match yourself.

The main pairing rule is to be sure the chocolate dessert isn't sweeter than the wine. With Quady's Elysium, poached pears coated with melted dark chocolate surrounded by a drizzle of red raspberry coulis is paradise to me.

Zester Daily contributor Elin McCoy is a wine and spirits columnist and author of "The Emperor of Wine: The Rise of Robert M. Parker, Jr. and the Reign of American Taste."

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