Local Chocolate in the South
Finally, there is a “local” American chocolate. In Nashville, Tennessee, no less. Olive & Sinclair Chocolate, Tennessee’s only bean to bar chocolate maker, sources its beans from Ghana and the Dominican Republic. It has found a way to court and reflect a Southern palate in its products. Their chocolate makers uniquely mix buttermilk into their white chocolate. Brown sugar sweetens everything. Duck fat thickens their caramels. Bourbon cured cocoa nibs crackles their SOFI (Specialty Food Association) award winning Bourbon Nib Brittle. A refurbished melanger, formerly used for grinding grits, processes their cocoa beans.
Generally, it is quite a challenge to find a “local” chocolate unless you travel 20 degrees north or south of the equator, where cocoa beans grow. Even then the chocolate would most likely be served as a beverage, if at all. In African countries most growers never taste a chocolate made from their cocoa beans. Chocolate as we know it in the cooler, wealthier Northern Hemisphere requires importing cocoa beans out of their equatorial habitat and transporting them long distances, often by boat. Buying chocolate from cocoa beans grown and processed in Hawaii or from Guatemala might be the closest to “local” chocolate available here in the States.
At least a “local” flavor in our chocolate may be found at Olive & Sinclair. All of this Southern chocolate loving care may be found as far away as Thailand and as close as your internet connection.
Recent Posts
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Sweet Treat: Chocolate and the Making of American Jews
You may wonder: how did chocolate help define American Jews? Through chocolate, we see that Jews were part of America since its earliest days. Well, since 1701 at least, Jews in the Colonies made part of their living through chocolate. Several Sephardim, leaders of their New York and Newport Jewish and secular communities, participated in
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How About Some Uterus Challah?
When Logan Zinman Gerber felt enraged about the loss of reproductive rights in the U.S., she baked challah. Not any challah. She shaped it into a uterus. It wasn’t long after the birth of her daughter that Gerber, a longtime challah baker and staff member of the Religious Action Center of the Reform movement, considered
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A Manhattan synagogue explores the rich, surprising history of Jews and chocolate
I’m grateful for this story written by Rachel Ringer, published at JTA/NY Jewish Week on December 20, 2023: (New York Jewish Week) — In 2006, Rabbi Deborah Prinz was on a trip to Europe with her husband, Rabbi Mark Hurvitz, when they wandered into a chocolate shop in Paris. While meandering about the store, Prinz picked
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Exhibit Opens! Sweet Treat! Chocolate & the Making of American Jews
Sweet Treat is a delicious gastronomic adventure into the history and resilience of American Jewish chocolate making. This exhibition invites you to follow the chocolate trail to America, a scrumptious journey through time and place. Chocolate gives us a lens to understand Jewish migration, as the chocolate trade parallels the migrations of the Jewish
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Some Previous Posts
(in alphabetical order)
- "Boston Chocolate Party" Q&As with Deborah Kalb
- 2022 Media for The "Boston Chocolate Party"
- About Rabbi Deborah Prinz
- Baking Prayers into High Holiday Breads
- Boston Chocolate Party
- Chocolate Chip Politics
- Digging into Biblical Breads
- For the Easiest Hanukah Doughnuts Ever
- Forthcoming! On the Bread Trail
- Funny Faced Purim Pastries
- Good Riddance Chameitz or, The Polemics of Passover's Leaven
- Injera*
- Israeli Chocolate Spread
- Jewish Heritage Month: Baseball & Chocolate!
- Matzah - But, the Dough Did Rise!
- Plan a Choco-Hanukkah Party: 250th Anniversary Tea Party
- Prayers Into Breads
- To Shape Dough: A Trio of Techniques
- Why Is Challah On My Matzah Box?