Graves Foundation mixes wine and chocolate

FAYETTEVILLE — Chocolate chicken enchiladas with tomatillo sauce, fresh pico and a white chocolate drizzle? Really?

“I don’t think that’s anything you’re going to see on a menu around town or anywhere in the state,” said wine salesman Jason Willems of Glazers, commenting on an entree served at the third annual Ooh! la la! chocolate and wine pairing event.

The Feb. 16 event at the Garden Room on Dickson Street was a benefit for the Jackson L. Graves Foundation.

The affair began with a champagne and chocolate reception, followed by a two-course meal prepared by Chef Miles James of James at the Mill. Both courses were paired with wine selections by Willems.

“When Miles [James] told me the pieces he was going to put together for the first course, I said, ‘You’re crazy,’ and I knew I had my work cut out for me,” Willems said  about the task of perfectly pairing the dish with a wine.

For the second course, guests moved on to a rack of pork with cheese grits, apple-pineapple relish and a chocolate reduction sauce.

Vince Pianalto, a culinary instructor at Northwest Arkansas Community College, created the desserts for the event — a lavender-scented caramel, a chocolate pistachio macaroon and a chocolate crepe filled with chocolate buttermilk panna cotta.

Hosts James and Angie Graves established the Jackson L. Graves foundation in memory of their firstborn son, Jackson Graves, who was born prematurely in October 2004 and died four months later at Arkansas Children’s Hospital. The foundation works to enhance neonatal intensive care and provide family support for relatives of the infants.

“[Anyone who has] had a baby in neonatal intensive care, knows just how trying and stressful it can be, and we learned that first hand about seven years ago,” Angie Graves told the crowd before the first course. “The need for support for these families and for these hospitals never goes away, because 24 hours a day, seven days a week, babies are coming in. It doesn’t ever stop.”

The foundation recently added two waterless milk warmers and a recliner to Washington Regional Medical Center, and it donated CD players and a noise monitoring system to the neonatal intensive care unit at the Willow Creek Women’s Hospital.

“A lot of the things we do are not huge monetarily,” Graves said. “They’re not million-dollar donations, but we have found tremendous satisfaction in the ability to meet smaller needs that fall through the cracks that are so important.”

Tickets to the event — $85 per person and $160 per couple — sold out well in advance.

The foundation raised even more money by auctioning a seven-course dinner party at James at the Mill with wines paired by Willem from his personal wine collection. The dinner, raffled off by auctioneer Richard Clifton, went for $2,400.