Chocolaterie Wanders offers you the world's finest handmade gourmet chocolates.

About Sweet:

“The premier culinary festival for New York City’s” Food Network’s New York City Wine & Food Festival” is deeply concerned that more than 35 million Americans are at risk of hunger. That is why “We’re Sweet On” the Food Bank For New York City and Share Our Strength, two of America’s leading hunger-relief organizations and the hosts and beneficiaries of SWEET. ”

Why am I telling you this? Well we wanted to let you know that we participated in part in this event, as in providing Perrier Jouët with a specially made Wine Pate de Fruit made with pairings of:

- Perrier Jouët’s Grand Brut champagne paired with green apple puree

- Blason Rose champagne paired with fresh-squeezed pink grapefruit juice

Every visitor of the show will receive a complimentary favor from us and Perrier Jouët:

We were very happy to work with Perrier Jouët and to be able to contribute to the good cause of the event.

We were also surprised how well the champagne went with the Wine Pate de Fruit! In particular the Blason rose champagne and pink grapefruit make a good combination.

We will make up some boxes of this special selection for our upcoming one year anniversary - but that’s for another post!

… it was yesterday. We were out and about at The Winery at La Grange and gave a tasting of our Wine Pate de Fruit and the Libertysquares. Everybody enjoyed them and we actually stayed longer than planned - not only because of all the hungry mouths to fill, but also to get some goat cheese, crackers and wine and to sit outside in the shade, on the grass and just relax for a little bit. Now this is how I like working

Today we made more Pate de Fruit, because we were completely out. We will probably be at both wineries again on July the 4th to celebrate and enjoy Independence Day. Melanie and I will split up, but only for 3-4 hours or so, then re-unite to enjoy the fireworks in Manassas. Step by and have some wine and chocolate, or see if you can spot us in Oldtown Manassas.

Happy 4th of July everyone!

We will be tasting our chocolate confections and Wine Pate de Fruit tomorrow from Noon until 5pm at our friends over at Pearmund Cellars. Pearmund Cellars is celebrating their 4th year after the grand opening of the winery and if you haven’t anything planned yet, why not relax and enjoy the weekend with a good glass of wine and some of our confections?

We introduced our wine pate de fruit two weeks ago and they are a hit. We will also be sampling all four flavors made with wine from Pearmund Cellars. The wine content is about 15-20% and other than that we only use fruit puree, sugar, glycose and pectin to make our pate de fruit. These are the fruit / wine pairings:

Green Apple / Chardonnay,

Pink Grapefruit / Viognier,

Red Raspberry / Ameritage and

Cassis / Lisa’s Merlot

See you tomorrow!

What a heat. Well, not really heat, but standing outside with this nice weather in a black chef coat does make you a little warmer. We had a great time though while debuting our Wine Pate de Fruit - everyone loved them (even before they had tasted any wine!). The festival was well attended and all in all we can call it a success. Here is what our little table looked like:

Now we’ll have to pack our bags, tomorrow we will be in NYC and see what prize we win at the Golden Scoop Awards …. cross your fingers

First close up picture of the pate de fruit:

The recipes are figured out and the only one needing a little tweaking is the Cassis/Lisa’s Merlot one. Right now it just melts on your tongue - and if you are not careful enough it also melts while handling it

We also prepped for our newest product next week, which is still ‘top secret’ …. all the lights are go though and it should be a big success

Tomorrow we’ll be having a tasting at Massimo’s Il Vino in Fairfax, come swing by and have some fun with us - maybe pick some nice italian red for dad together with a box of chocolates? If you can’t make it to Fairfax, see us on Sunday for the Wine & Jazz Festival in Manassas, it will be our first appearance and I am sure everyone will have a blast - I know I will, since there is wine involved!

We teamed up with Pearmund Cellars and the Winery at LaGrange to produce Pate de Fruit with their wines. We are using two whites and two reds with cassis, raspberry, pink grapefruit and green apple puree. The result is delicious and refreshing and well worth a try I think. We’ll be giving a tasting of all of the flavors and also our regular chocolate assortment upcoming Sunday on the Manassas Wine & Jazz Festival.

We are really excited and the weather plays well too it seems - hope to see you on Sunday!