“Winemaker’s Chocolate” features WellVine™, an upcycled ingredient from winemaking that adds flavor and superfood nutrition to rich dark chocolate
(Las Vegas, February 6, 2022) Making its debut at the Winter Fancy Food Show 2022 is Vine to Bar, the world’s only premium dark chocolate to include superfood ingredient WellVine™ Chardonnay Marc. Upcycled from the spent grapes of the winemaking process, Chardonnay Marc tempers the bitter notes in rich dark chocolate and brings beneficial nutrients that can contribute to better gut and heart health, delivering on a better-for-you but indulgent experience. Vine to Bar products are available for sampling in the Chocolate Pavilion at booth 1235. Special events during the show include a wine and chocolate pairing experience hosted by Master Sommelier Michael Jordan and renowned chocolatier Ralph Jerome.
“We call Vine to Bar the ‘winemaker’s chocolate’ to acknowledge the path that this new chocolate has taken to arrive,” said Ralph Jerome, former head of global innovation at Mars, Inc. and Vine to Bar chocolatier and chief innovation officer. “It was born from the vision of winemakers, who saw value in upcycling the spent grapes used to make wine, and who spent over a decade working to capture that vibrancy in an ingredient that will one day enhance lots of different products. It’s only fitting that our first products to launch share ancient history – wine and chocolate.”
Jerome notes that, as two of the most celebrated products of fermentation, wine and chocolate have always been a natural pairing. Vine to Bar elevates the experience of dark chocolate and marries well with wines developed in the same Northern California coastal environment where Vine to Bar was born.
Flavor Notes for Vine to Bar Chocolates
Chardonnay Marc brings a vibrancy to Vine to Bar products that softens the dark chocolate’s bitter edge. The result is premium dark chocolate with a flavor that is balanced by the natural, wine grape-derived fruitiness.
Vine to Bar’s offerings include both bars and individually wrapped tasting squares, as well as chocolate-covered almonds. With inclusions like tart cherry, cocoa nibs, and chardonnay smoked salt, the flavor profile across the product range is both complex and approachable.
Vine to Bar chocolates contain no alcohol but pair beautifully with both red and white wines, elevating the aromatics in the wine, as demonstrated by Master Sommelier Michael Jordan and esteemed chocolatier Ralph Jerome at a recent virtual tasting.
About Vine to Bar
Vine to Bar is the first premium dark chocolate to feature the unique taste of WellVine Chardonnay Marc, a new superfood ingredient upcycled from fresh-pressed Chardonnay wine grapes. With cacao sourced primarily from West Africa and South America that is certified for sustainability and positive social impact by Cocoa Horizons, the blended chocolate in Vine to Bar comes from Barry Callebaut, the world’s premier supplier of fine chocolate. Vine to Bar chocolate contains 15% Chardonnay Marc by weight, and the product range features almond, Himalayan pink salt, chardonnay smoked salt, tart cherry and cocoa nib inclusions. The product range is non-GMO and made with natural ingredients. Formulated utilizing a proprietary process to preserve the natural plant-based bioactives, each serving of Vine to Bar chocolates contains over 200mg of powerful flavanols.
Vine to Bar is distributed direct-to-consumer via the company’s ecommerce website, www.vinetobar.com, and via limited retail sales at tasting rooms, select specialty retailers and independent markets.
About WellVine Chocolate, LLC
WellVine™ Chardonnay Marc is the result of more than a decade of effort to valorize the superb culinary and nutritive value of pressed wine grapes, and to capture that superfood potential in a versatile ingredient, while at the same time helping to provide greater sustainability and improve food security through winemaking – one of the world’s oldest and most important food industries. At harvest, winemakers dry and mill the spent skins, pulp and seeds of grapes into a pomace using a proprietary process that preserves the fiber and flavor. There’s scientific evidence that Chardonnay Marc can contribute to a healthier gut and cardiovascular system, based on a multi-year research effort by WellVine, the USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS), and the University of California Davis (UC Davis). For more on the science behind WellVine, visit https://wellvine.com/blog/wine-not/.