We’ve covered wine and cheese, wine and food, wine and art…but we’ve neglected wine and chocolate! In order remedy that, Dandy and I visited La Forêt in Napa last week and we both shockingly spent just a bit more money in this tempting little shop than we intended to. Ok… it’s not that shocking.
Wendy trained at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and went on to practice her craft at some of the top establishments in the industry, including The French Laundry in Yountville. She takes from her pastry training to create chocolates that are unparalleled in texture, flavor, and presentation. She and her husband worked tirelessly to get her business running in the beginning, working well into the night to wrap caramels and prepare her deliveries for the next morning.
Wendy has created a unique “allocation” program to distribute her creations more widely, and not just to the fine dining establishments in the Bay Area. We’ve all heard of wine club memberships, but yes please-sign me up for the one that delivers fancy hand-made seasonal and local chocolate creations!
Each season she creates an allocation with a theme for her chocolates. For the Summer allocation she named it the French Polynesia Edition that include flavors like Roasted Pineapple and Banana Po’e. For the Spring allocation her theme was English Country Garden that included a chocolate called the Cucumber Finger Sandwich and the Earl Grey Tea. One of the most creative allocation’s she did was called the Famous Authors Edition that had Fitzgerald’s Gin Rickey & Kerouac’s Apple Pie & Ice Cream.
I’m certainly not the first to write about La Forêt, they’ve been featured in Food and Wine, Martha Stewart Living, Brides Magazine and many other respectable publications. Wendy is currently traveling throughout France for the summer, and if you’re interested in her enviable adventures you can follow her blog here.
Next time you’re in Napa with a sweet tooth, skip the candy aisle at the grocery store and step into La Forêt. Your taste buds will thank you profusely for the upgrade.
