I have has RV done by some fine cooks and there is no relation between RV and chocolate worth mentioning. Pluto and Mercury. Opposite ends of the Solar system.
Well... My grandmother’s recipe and everyone I grew up with know for a fact.. Red Velvet is a chocolate cake. Heck it’s in the recipe for goodness sake. That is one of the two best ingredients in Red Velvet. There is as much cocoa in RV as there is in a plain chocolate cake.. at least in the family recipes. So maybe your fine cooks are from the wrong part of the world, or maybe my grandmother was a master cook.. well she was that.