Olive & Sinclair

By now, most local Nashvillians have heard of Olive & Sinclair Chocolate. They are the only bean to bar chocolate maker in the South, and they are now giving tours of their small operation on Friday afternoons. I’d been looking forward to taking the Things there since we booked it a week ago, and we were not disappointed.

It’s so wonderful to see people working at something about which they are so passionate, and these guys clearly love their job. The owner, Scott was out of town, but his 2 colleagues seemed to have it all well in hand. Please excuse my very poor phone photos…

I don’t want to give away all the fun facts from the tour for those wanting to go, but I will share a couple of tidbits. They use a coffee roaster obtained from Nashville’s own Bongo Java for their cacao beans (from both Ghana and the Dominican Republic), and there is ZERO waste. They are able to trade or donate all of their cacao shells and nib dust to local breweries like Yazoo for chocolate beers, or local farmers as mulch, etc.. Nothing is wasted and they make every effort to work with local artisans in any way possible.

 

 

These bourbon barrels from local distillery Corsair are used to flavor the new Bourbon Nib Brittle that was available for tasting…divine!

We couldn’t see the bars actually being made because only 4 people run this whole operation, so they have to shut down so they can give the tour! The video at the bottom from the O & S website does show it all, so check it out.

You know we came home with some of that goodness. The Things went safe with the 67%, I went for the nibs, and the CC likes it spicy.

When we asked if we could have a couple of cacao beans for Thing 2 to take to his share at school, they gave us a whole bag along with some samples for the kids to taste!  So nice and generous. I think Thing 2 will be getting some high fives at school this week!

Not only is it the best chocolate I’ve ever tasted, but the most beautiful, hand wrapped packaging, and super nice people with a great business philosophy to boot. No, this is NOT a sponsored post, but I am a superfan…obvs.

 

Photo via Olive & Sinclair

Olive and Sinclair Artisan Chocolate from josh anderson on Vimeo.