With Valentine's Day on the horizon, wine and chocolate tastings have been peppering the calendars of wine shops and cafes.

I attended a tasting at Robust, 227 West Lockwood Avenue in Webster Groves. Participants were able to sample chocolates from about 10 Missouri producers and choose matches from some 20 wines. That's a lot of chocolate and a lot of wine, so I decided to limit myself to dark chocolate and to focus on wines costing $15 or less.

I also bought one dry wine and one sweet wine to take home for tasting with two of my favorite dark chocolates from Bissinger's: the Rainforest Alliance 60 percent dark chocolate and the dark chocolate raspberry caramel.

For the dry wine, I chose the 2007 Peirano Estate Vineyards The Unknown, from Lodi, Calif., and for the sweet, the 2003 Volante Napa Valley Late Harvest Zinfandel. Robust doesn't usually stock those wines, but The Unknown is available for $10.99 at Kaya's Imports, 4117 Union Road, and Randall's, 1910 South Jefferson Avenue. The Volante, which comes in a half bottle (375 ml), is available for $11.99 at the Whole Foods in Brentwood and the Straub's in Webster Groves.

Both are full-bodied, concentrated wines that can stand up to the intensity of dark chocolate. Which wine you'd prefer depends on your palate. One trick I found is to let the chocolate melt a tiny bit in my mouth before sipping the wine.

The Unknown, which went well with the 60 percent dark chocolate, is an interesting blend of 70 percent syrah, 20 percent petite sirah, 5 percent cabernet sauvignon and a splash of the white grape viognier. This is a big but soft, fruity red that tastes of plums, figs and blackberries, with a long finish that has hints of coffee. The alcohol level is 13.8 percent. The Unknown is best enjoyed with food. You can pair it with pasta topped with a hearty Bolognese sauce, then continue sipping it when you move on to a dark chocolate dessert.

The Volante, which was a great match with the dark raspberry caramel, is a delicious small production (only 390 cases) dessert wine. The term Late Harvest refers to sweet wines that were made from grapes that were left on the vine as late in the season as possible, allowing the sugar to become more concentrated. If you like fruity, in-your-face zinfandels, you might be interested in trying this sweet version. It is a rich, luscious wine with flavors of ripe plums and berries and hints of spice. It reminded me of ruby-style ports, but because it's not a fortified wine, it's not as heavy and is lower in alcohol at 15.8 percent. And like ruby ports, this wine would pair well with English Stilton and other blue cheeses.