Wine Country Chocolates is a retail space and chocolate tasting room where one can educate one’s palate. Ryan Lely/Sonoma Valley Sun
If your childhood dreams ever found you inside a chocolate shop where you could taste the different concoctions until you found just the right one, you can feel like that kid again when you visit Wine Country Chocolates.
More than just a retail store, Wine Country Chocolates is a tasting room, and like the winery tasting rooms, it offers a changing selection of fillings and flavors as well as a tasting panel where you can educate your palate on the nuances of chocolate and how it pairs with wine.
The family-run enterprise includes co-owners Betty Kelly and her daughter Caroline. They first sold their truffles and molded chocolates at farmer’s markets, where locals quickly became steady customers of their signature confection, wine truffles. “Our wine truffles were a big hit, because they were made with premium wines, which we used to infuse the ganache centers,” said Kelly.
Eventually the company needed a permanent home and Kelly searched for a retail space with a kitchen. With a scarcity of suitable rentals available, the two partners decided to build their own kitchen and took over a retail space in the historic Jack London Village in Glen Ellen. “This is kind of like ‘gourmet gulch,’” said Kelly, “There’s a cheese shop, a restaurant and catering company and a wine bar, plus a new olive oil pressing facility.” People come here and taste, shop and stroll the grounds or picnic outside overlooking the creek.
The shop was remodeled to include a large window that overlooks the kitchen so customers can see the chocolate being made. Kelly and her daughter are the primary chocolatiers, and all the products are made in small batches daily and contain no preservatives, waxes or artificial colors or flavors.
Tastings of the ganache filling change with seasonal specialties and new flavors, and the ultra-creamy filling literally melts in your mouth. “We have a recipe that we’ve developed for making our truffles richer and creamier than others,” said Kelly. “It’s more difficult to make, and it takes more time and a special process to coat them, but we think it’s worth it, and customers can taste the difference.”
The chocolate tasting panel allows visitors to try samples of chocolate that start with milk chocolate, at 38 percent pure chocolate, to those with 61 percent, then 72 percent, and the purest and darkest form at 82 percent. The purer the chocolate – and the less sugar it contains – the better it will taste with wine. And the truffles made with merlot, cabernet, zinfandel and port-infused centers are edible proof of the perfect pairing that dark chocolate and wine make. The shop makes custom truffles for many Sonoma wineries and individuals who bring their wines in – one bottle makes 60 truffles.
Wine Country Chocolates will make custom orders of truffles and fillings or molded chocolates personalized into any design or shape requested and can produce them in small or large quantities. All products can be ordered online, but it’s much more satisfying to go by in person and let your taste buds, not your keyboard, do the deciding.
Wine Country Chocolates
14301 Arnold Dr.
Glen Ellen
707.996.1010
www.winecountrychocolates.com
