Decorate your own Santa Barbara chocolate bar
“Everyone, take a small bite,” we are told as our chocolate truffle and wine pairing begins. “Don’t eat it all!”
Geena Bouché’s orders not to eat it all at once proved to be the overriding advice at Twenty-Four Blackbirds’ first-ever chocolate bar decorating class at the bean-to-bar maker’s East Haley Street facility last Friday. From the homemade marshmallows and toffee bits we could use as toppings to the melted dark chocolate poured into our molds, to the togarashi-spicy, espresso-scented truffles during the matching session, restraint was the order of the day for every decision during this hands-on affair.
For many years, as co-founder of the wine education company Wine Cult, Bouché led classes on wine and truffle pairing developed by Mike Orlando, founder of Twenty-Four Blackbirds. Their collaboration intensified during the virtual tasting days of the pandemic, resulting in seasonal flavor-pairing nights. Today, the two host this 75-minute class every Friday ($65) as well as a factory/pairing tour every Thursday ($60). There are also a range of non-wine tours now offered on different days of the week, starting at $15.
Our class began with a glass of sparkling wine, and then Kate Joy Seversen, a Twenty-Four Blackbirds employee, asked us to eat the Honduran chocolate piece in front of us, the base we would use for our bars. As they melted on our tongues, she talked us through strategies for decorating our two bars, explaining the concepts of congruent and contrasting flavors. Seversen suggested trying a little of each—perhaps peppercorns with something sweet like marshmallow to emphasize the differences, or dried strawberry and pineapple to amplify the similarities.
Once we got to the toppings table, my strategy got even more scattered, and I even doubled up on toppings in the same little cups. We each had four to fill, but I had at least 10 different toppings by the time I got back to my station. This included all of the ingredients mentioned above (including the butterscotch, which I couldn’t help but eat right away), but also various salts, dried flowers and fruits, rock sugars, cacao nibs, fennel seeds, and more.
We then queued up to collect our liquefied dark chocolate from the Wonka-style dispenser, which drops into the molds with a magical shake, and let loose decorating the bars while the toppings still clung to the melted batter. My wife showed culinary savvy and restraint in her choices (apricot and marshmallow were a solid combination), but my son and I took it a step further, dumping tons of colorful elements onto our slowly solidifying bars.
The truffle-wine pairing arrived as we waited for the bars to cool in the cooler. This put Bouché back in charge, and she explained that Mary Taylor Wine’s selections of white Bordeaux and red Buzet from France were made in a négociant style, as Taylor works directly with producers to bottle their wine for import. togarashi caramel truffle — always a favorite of mine — we sipped the sauvignon blanc-based white, then switched to a merlot-based red for the espresso ganache truffle.
Individually, each chocolate and wine was excellent. Together, they were interesting and thought-provoking, though I didn’t find that the pairing made any element more delicious. And that’s the fun of pairing, exploring what works and what doesn’t, with no right or wrong answers. The fact that Bouché and Orlando boldly do this with the notoriously difficult-to-pair base of dark chocolate is itself worthy of applause.
As we wrapped up the wedding and accepted a few more splashes of wine, our bars came out from the back, sprinkled with our own selected glories. Since most people were wrapping theirs in the branded wrappers we were provided, I was eager. It turns out that, while slightly confusing to the palate, pepper, calendula, hibiscus, cacao nibs, sea salt, and fennel taste pretty good together on a chocolate bar. And, you’ll be proud to know, I haven’t eaten it all yet.
See twentyfourblackbirds.com for visiting times and tickets.
