Marni and Doug Margerum brought their Margerum Wine Company wines to a unique pairing with Twenty-Four Blackbirds Chocolate at Santa Barbara’s Hotel Californian. 
Mike Orlando, founder of Twenty-Four Blackbirds Chocolate, provided a winning pair at the “Mute-Age” reception. 
Welcome to the Hotel Californian.
An invitation to a wine and chocolate presentation at Santa Barbara’s swank Hotel Californian was just the right incentive to get me to venture out of my coronavirus quarantine.
I stepped off the private elevator into the hotel’s spacious Alcazar Suite, replete with two bedrooms and 2½ bathrooms, a fireplace, hospitality kitchen, dining area and not one, but two, private terraces. If you check in here, you will not ever want to leave.
And that’s before the wine and chocolate.
The hosts for the evening were Doug Margerum, director of Margerum Wine Company and his wife, Marni, along with Mike Orlando, founder of Twenty-Four Blackbirds Chocolate in Santa Barbara.
To ensure social distancing, guests arrived at 15-minute intervals and were provided with their own wine glasses on the outdoor patio for a perfect evening with one of the best views around.
We had been invited to the new wine “Mute-Age,” which was said to be a never-before-seen pairing of Margerum wines with handmade artisan chocolates. The two local companies also offered an additional pairing of Margerum Amaro and Twenty-Four Blackbirds Bolivian chocolate.
Margerum Wine Company makes its wines at its state-of-the-art winery at 59 Industrial Way in Buellton. It produces limited quantities of fine wines made from grapes grown at its own estate vineyards and top vineyards around Santa Barbara County.
“Mute-Age is a play on words,” Margerum told Noozhawk.
For oenophiles, he explained, “this Mute-Age wine has been silently baking and aging in 34-liter demi-johns on the Margerum Wine Company roof for the last two years.”
“It’s a naturally sweet wine obtained by mutage during alcoholic fermentation,” Margerum said. “We add our barrel-aged brandy … during fermentation.”
The result, I can attest, pairs perfectly with Twenty-Four Blackbirds’ 75% Kokoa Kamili Tanzanian Dark Chocolate, whose fruit and creamy dark chocolate flavors melt into your mouth.
The second offering of Margerum Amaro — “bitter” in Italian — is a variety of Italian herbal liqueur, which is commonly consumed as an after-dinner digestif. Having dessert before dinner was my kind of evening!
All Margerum Wine Company wines and gourmet soft goods are available at its tasting room at 19 E. Mason St., across from the Hotel Californian’s main entrance. I’ll freely admit I left with an armload of chocolate truffles and other goodies. The tasting room has a large, sit-down outdoor seating area for guests so you can keep your distance in comfort.
Twenty-Four Blackbirds Chocolate, at 428 E. Haley St., is only accepting online orders for now.
— Judy Foreman is a Noozhawk columnist and longtime local writer and lifestyles observer. She can be contacted at news@noozhawk.com. Click here for previous columns. The opinions expressed are her own.