Episode Transcript
Can you imagine having a wine and chocolate tasting, a
rum and chocolate tasting, how about a beer and chocolate tasting. Well,
you've got to hear from this amazing chocolate tear. Her
name is Rachel from Windfield's Chocolate Bar, and she is
my guest, and it is gonna be a delicious podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Imagine going to a wine tasting.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Usually it's a wine and cheese tasting, but no, not
in Houston. It's a wine and chocolate tasting. And I
want to hold up. I don't know if you guys
can see this all right? This is the Space City
Truffle Collection and the name of the company, and you
might not have heard of it. That's why I want
to tell you about it now so you can stock
(00:40):
up for Christmas. Windfield's Chocolate Bar and Rachel, who is
a transplant from Canada, the Prairies in Canada. You have
been making chocolate and obsessed with chocolate since you're a teenager.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Is that right?
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Well kind of. I started officially on chocolate twenty two
years ago, which is not quite my teenage years. But
I did learn how to make all kinds of sweets
as a kid. My grandma taught me how to make
marshmallows when I was about five oh so, even though
the chocolate bug didn't hit until a bit later, it
was all sweets all the time for me as a kid.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
So Winfields is the name.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
I'm trying to get your beautiful catalog up Windfield's Chocolate Bar.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Now you are in three locations around Houston.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
I want our viewers to go and check you out
and taste these incredible truffles. Tell us some of your
delicacies and where you're located for sure.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
So we have three stores in Houston. We have one
at Augusta and Westheimer. It's right near a pretty famous
location of Beck's Prime that has the beautiful oak trees.
So we've opened up just across from those guys. So
that's kind of a local landmark you can orient yourself with.
The other one is at Rice Village, right in Rice Village,
and it's been some version of it has actually been
(01:55):
there since two thousand. We used to be the Chocolate Bar,
and we rebranded as Windfields a few years back, so
right on University Boulevard in Rice Village. And then the
third location is in River Oaks at the corner of
Kirby and West Alabama, and so you can go there
and buy all of our stuff that we make locally here,
handmade in Texas by Texans. Except for me, I'm the
(02:16):
transplanted Canadian.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
These truffles that you presented at a wine tasting recently
are hand painted by your employees.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Tell me about that.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Yeah, So we use colored cocoa butter, and cocoa butter
is the fat that gives chocolate its hard structure. So
if you take that out, you just have cocoa powder.
So you can most people can imagine what coco powder
means and what it looks like and how it feels.
But if you add cocoa butter to it, you get chocolate.
And if you take that cocoa butter out and color it,
you can make an edible paint. And so we use
(02:47):
that very special edible paint to hand paint inside the
chocolate mold and then we make a truffle inside with
all kinds of different fillings. We have I think over
twenty now fillings. Some of our favorites are raspberry with
hot rocks. There's lemon, blueberry, there's hazel nut. We make
a hazel nut one where we roast our hazelnuts fresh
in house and grind them into a beautiful hazelnut paste
(03:09):
to mix with milk chocolate. We do several different kinds
of caramel. We do dark chocolate, milk chocolate, white chocolate.
We do gold chocolate, which is white chocolate that's been caramelized.
If you get me started, Dana, I could talk all day.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
But believable.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
I was looking at your You've got corporate like you
can brand a name on these boxes or I mean
they can be a beautiful corporate gift, right, Yes.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Yes, we sure can. It's getting a little tight for
that for the holidays this year, but to know for
next year exactly. But we also do it all year
round for other events like people use our products for
recruiting events or trade shows, or you know, if they
have a special anniversary or all kinds of things. So
you know you want to thank a client, we can
do that for you all year round. Does it just
have to be at Christmas?
Speaker 1 (03:56):
So do how do we get in touch with you
if we've got a big event coming up we want
to plan for one or do what's the best way
to reach you?
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Yeah, so you can just go to our website which
is Windfields CB, which stands for Chocolate Bar. So that's
w I, N F I E L D S CB
dot com. And on there there's a tab that's perfect
On there, there's a tab that says custom ordering and
so there's a little forum you can fill out there
and it'll come to our commissary and we will get
(04:25):
in touch with you to help you make beautiful chocolates
for your event or your gifting or whatever it is
that you need.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
And chocolate with milk, chocolate with wine? Did you have
you have you do you?
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Have you ever done a chocolate wine tasting event before?
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Was this?
Speaker 1 (04:46):
You were out at M three and we just had
Angie on, so she was talking about you. Is this
something that's common to have a chocolate wine event like this? I,
you know, I haven't heard of it that much down here,
but up in Canada, I was doing it pretty often,
really yeah, And I was actually I have done chocolate
and wine, chocolate and beer, chocolate and whiskey.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
And basically the principles of tasting and pairing are sort
of the same. No matter what you're pairing it with.
You want to pay attention to, you know, specific notes
of whatever you're pairing so that you can make things
play really nicely together as flavor. And I'm a bit
of a scientist before I went into chocolate, so I
really like nerding out about those flavor molecules and what
makes two different things taste good together. So it's really
(05:29):
a bit of a side passion of mine to do
those kinds of things.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
If we've got an event and we would love to
have it paired with chocolate, like a beer and chocolate,
I love that idea.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Would we just reach out to you through your website
as well?
Speaker 3 (05:41):
Yeah, absolutely, you can reach out and we can see
what we can do for you. And yeah, it's a
really fun way to explore chocolate and a really fun
way for me to connect with the Houston community because
I'm new here. So it's really great. I love doing that.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
That is excellent, Rachel.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Listen, You're bringing so much joy to our bellies this
holiday season and we appreciate all you do and the
incredible work in making that chocolate and those flavors come
together in such a beautiful way.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Houston has so many gems and you are definitely one
of them.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Oh, thank you so much, Dana. Thanks for having me
and a merry, Merry Christmas.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
I hope you get to breathe a little bit once
you fulfill all your chocolate orders.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Yeah, I'm gonna take a vacation in January.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Okay. Thank you, Rachel, so great to talk with you.
Thanks for sharing.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
Ye bye bye bye
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