Decorate Your Own Santa Barbara Chocolate Bar

“Everyone take a small nibble,” we are told as our pairing of chocolate truffles and wine begins. “Don’t eat the whole thing!”

Geena Bouché’s orders to not eat everything right away proved to be the overriding advice during Twenty-Four Blackbirds’ first-ever chocolate-bar-decorating class inside the bean-to-bar manufacturer’s East Haley Street factory last Friday. From the homemade marshmallows and butterscotch chips that we could use as toppings to the melty dark chocolate dolloped into our molds, to those tōgarashi-spiked and espresso-laced truffles of the pairing session, restraint was required for every decision during this hands-on affair.

For many years, as cofounder of the wine education company Wine Cult, Bouché has led classes that match wines with truffles crafted by Twenty-Four Blackbirds founder Mike Orlando. Their collaboration went into overdrive during the virtual tasting days of the pandemic, leading to seasonal flavor release pairing parties. Now the two are hosting this 75-minute class every Friday ($65) as well as a factory tour/pairing every Thursday ($60). There’s also a range of tours without wine now offered on various days of the week, priced as low as $15.

Our class began with a splash of sparkling wine, and then Twenty-Four Blackbirds employee Kate Joy Seversen asked us to eat the coin of Honduran chocolate in front of us, the base we’d be using for our bars. As those melted on our tongues, she told us about strategies for decorating our two bars, explaining the concepts of congruent and contrasting flavors. Seversen suggested trying a bit of each, maybe peppercorns with something sweet like the marshmallow to emphasize differences, or the dried strawberry and pineapple to amplify similarities.

Once we hit the toppings table, my strategy strayed more scattershot, and I even doubled-up toppings in the same small cups. We each had four to fill, but I had at least 10 different toppings by the time I got back to my station. That included all of the aforementioned ingredients (including the butterscotch, which I couldn’t help but eat right away), but also various salts, dried flowers and fruits, rock sugars, cocoa nibs, fennel seeds, and so on.

Then we lined up to get our liquefied dark chocolate from the Wonka-like dispenser, which settles into the molds with a magic shake, and were turned loose on decorating the bars while the toppings would still stick to the melted goo. My wife showed culinary direction and proper restraint in her selections — apricot and marshmallow was a solid combo — but my son and I went a little wackier, dumping loads of colorful elements onto our slowly solidifying bars.

The truffle-wine pairing came as we waited for the bars to chill in the cooler. That put Bouché back in charge, and she explained that the Mary Taylor Wine 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. With the tōgarashi caramel truffle — always one of my faves — we sipped on the sauvignon blanc–based white, then shifted to a merlot-based red for the espresso ganache truffle.

Individually, each chocolate and each wine was excellent. Together, they were, well, interesting and thought-provoking, although I didn’t find that the pairing made any component more delicious. And that’s the fun of pairings, exploring what works and what doesn’t, with no right or wrong answers whatsoever. That Bouché and Orlando are boldly doing so with the notoriously hard-to-pair base of dark chocolate is alone worthy of applause.

As we wrapped up the pairing, and accepted a few more splashes of wine, our bars emerged from the back, sprinkled in our own selected glories. As most people packed theirs away in the branded wrappers that we were provided, I couldn’t wait. It turns out that, while slightly confusing to the palate, peppercorn, calendula, hibiscus, cocoa nib, sea salt, and fennel taste pretty good together on a chocolate bar. And, you’ll be proud to learn, I haven’t yet eaten the whole thing.

See twentyfourblackbirds.com for tour times and tickets.