The Four Chocolatiers
Confectioners get creative

Standing in her kitchen in the South Wedge section of Rochester, chocolatier Jennifer Posey knows what kind of day it will be for making chocolate by guessing the humidity level (she’s usually within two percentage points) just by how the air feels on her skin. High humidity can keep melted chocolate from setting properly and in an experienced chocolatier, this kind of precision is normal, honed by years of touching, eyeing, smelling and tasting chocolate.

These are exciting times in the Finger Lakes for chocolate lovers. It’s only natural that a region renowned for good wine, cheese, produce and locally roasted coffee would also offer small-batch artisanal chocolates. Like wine drinkers who shift from enjoying mass-produced jug wine to favoring boutique local vintages, chocolate eaters who grew up on Hershey’s and Cadbury often mature into aficionados, delighted by truffles, bark and pressed candies, most often crafted by quality-driven, skilled artisans who obsess about ingredients and process.

Posey, a West Coast transplant, once prided herself on not having any machines in her kitchen. She has brought in two tempering machines, but every stage of the process has her hands on it—literally. “We’re truly handmade,” she says. “We pack every chocolate, hand-tie every bow. We have no interest in manufacturing with machines—maybe a good sharp knife, but that’s it!”

For Tammy Travis, who owns Sarah’s Patisserie in Ithaca, it was while studying at the French Culinary Institute in Manhattan that an opportunity to work with celebrity chocolatier Jacques Torres opened the door for a life in chocolate. She fell in love with pastry and five years ago, after moving back home, opened her shop.

Watching her work, it’s a constant flow of melting and cooling. She mixes a bowl of glistening chocolate, careful to keep it in temper—the state when chocolate has the right consistency for pouring—before she ladles it into molds. She skims the surface of the tray with a putty knife (“I spend a lot of time shopping in hardware stores,” she says) and leaves the chocolate to set. She’ll flip the molds over to reveal beautiful fleurde-lys shaped candies. A few minutes later she pours chocolate on a marble slab to roll into cigarettes that will garnish her cakes, stopping only long enough to prop the door open a bit more—constantly fighting the humidity on this rainy afternoon. With an flick of her wrist, chocolate is spun off into three-inch-long rolls as her knife dances across the marble. A critical eye disapproves of the first few cigarettes—the staff will snack on those. This is the same eye that will fret over microscopic air bubbles in
a truffle, undetectable to the salivating chocolate eater. With its well-lit display of chocolates, cakes and cookies, standing in her store is like being in the best Parisian chocolate shop in the Marais district.

After a full day of making truffles and teaching pastry arts, Renée Suzette Daldry, the chocolatier behind Renée Suzette’s Chocolates, likes to sit down with a full-bodied red wine and some chocolate. A native of Waterloo, where she produces her bite-size truffles and chocolate sauces, Renée studied at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park and helped open Jacques Torres’s first chocolate shop in Manhattan. Daldry was Torres’s first employee and he continues to inspire her.

She draws on local ingredients like Byrne Dairy butter, Pittsford Farm heavy cream, Finger Lakes Distillery liquors, and wines from Billsboro and Cobblestone. Eating one of her truffles is like taking a bite of the essence of the Finger Lakes. “I’m proud to be from here—this is where my heart is,” Daldry says.

Wine seems to be a common denominator. Cary Becraft of CaryMo Chocolates came to the Finger Lakes via Brooklyn, where she picked up the art of chocolate at Brooklyn’s River Café. Later she spent her free time hunting for molds and making chocolate for friends on the side while holding down a day job at a photo studio in SoHo. It was her husband’s work in the wine industry and her desire to produce her chocolates in a less crazed and competitive atmosphere that brought them to Geneva. She transferred her 10-year-old chocolate company upstate and found a sedate and affordable place to do business, plus a proximity to the incredible wine and spirits of our region. “I do fillings that can accompany specific wines, such as vanilla caramels to go with a pinot,” she says. She is hoping to work more with liquor and is excited by what’s coming out of the Finger Lakes Distillery. “Certain bourbons are really great with chocolate and I want to work on a golden raisin—soaked in rum—filling.”

Like the rest, Posey is also big on pairing wine and chocolates, using producers like Ravines and Damiani. Her milk chocolate with toasted sesame seeds and Bali sea salt goes perfectly with local chardonnay and her peanut butter and jelly truffle made with Barrington Cellars concord wine is a grown-up version of a favorite childhood flavor combination.

Daldry has great respect for Posey. “She does flavors that are interesting and unexpected.” Remembering one of Hedonist’s entries for the Chocolate Ball competition that takes place in Rochester each year—a curry truffle cake—Daldry remarked, “Me, I like curry on my chicken but this was delicious!”

Posey is careful in how she pairs different flavors with the chocolate she sources. “I wanted to do a gingerbread truffle but what people were looking for was the taste of molasses” she says. “Chocolate is powerful, it can be hard to get the flavor you want without being obnoxious—I still want the subtleties of the chocolate to come through.”

Becraft says her inspiration is just as likely to come from dinner as a wine tasting—sometimes both at once. Creating an olive oil and balsamic vinegar truffle made perfect sense to her. “I used to do wine reductions all the time and balsamic vinegar is not much different from wine.” Her description of making this truffle sounds like preparing a meal. “I whisked in a strong Spanish or Italian olive oil, reduced some balsamic vinegar until it became sweet and syrupy and then stirred that in—I added a simple ganache and ended up with a chocolate bite that is like oil and vinegar.” Along with grey salt caramels, caramel popcorn peanut and red pepper dulce de leche, it is one of her best-selling flavors.

These chocolatiers open our palates to new tastes, making us adventurous and appreciative of all foods that are high-quality. The talk of what makes for good wine, cheese and coffee sounds similar to what makes for good chocolate. The words roasting, mouthfeel, single-origin and finish are spoken in winebars, cheese stores and coffee houses and are now common in the best chocolate shops as well, but it’s the experience of a happy consumer that these artisans are most excited about.

“My favorite thing is to watch other people enjoying the chocolate when they have no idea I made it,” Posey says. “That makes it all real for me.”

Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows is a Syracuse-based advocate for sustainable, local and just food. She writes the food blog Cookin’ in the ’Cuse.