Sonoma oozes with anticipation over National Chocolate Month

How could we be so lucky?|

Food entrepreneurs have long called Sonoma home, but the world has just discovered them, and that’s a good thing.

We have dairies and cheese factories, bakeries, jerky, charcuterie and simple syrup companies, makers of jams and preserve and sausages, and growers of all sorts of poultry and produce.

And now we find ourselves deep in the swirling midst of National Chocolate Month. How could we be so lucky?

Making chocolate truffles for over 16 years Betty Kelly of Wine Country Chocolates, with her tiny kitchen in Glen Ellen’s Jack London Village, has added Glen Ellen native Tyler Phillips to the business.

Kelly and friends and family specialize in chocolate truffles, even with edible logo decorations, that are flying out of the shop via online sales and to private and corporate purchasers, including hotels and wineries. In fact, they make nearly 200,000 chocolate truffles a year, all by hand, one at a time. That’s a lot of work in a small space, or anywhere for that matter.

Phillips is making bean-to-bar chocolate bars by hand with tremendous passion and strength at Wine Country Chocolate. Phillips’ company moniker is Shade Tree Chocolate Maker. (Bean-to-bar chocolates have made headlines recently, when the Mast Brothers, who claim to make bean-to-bar chocolate bars in their Brooklyn apartment, were allegedly found to be melting down other producers’ chocolates.)

If you call ahead you can sometimes get Phillips to show you the whole process from shelling the bean to tasting.

His goodies are available both at Kelly’s jack London Village kitchen and tasting room as well as at her tasting room in El Paseo of First Street East in Sonoma. Glen Ellen: 14301 Arnold Dr., #2. 996-1010.

Also keep an eye out for the still-aborning and state-of-the art CocoaPlanet factory and gluten-free café where owner Anne McKibben recently gave me a “watch your step” tour of the facility. With all of her manufacturing and general brilliance, McKibben has designed machines to produce her delicate low-sugar wafers popular at Whole Foods and at retail stores throughout the U.S. Can’t wait.

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