Alan McClure of Patric Chocolate in the KC Star

Local chocolate make Alan McClure makes some small batch artisanal chocolates under the label Patric Chocolate (@PatricChocolate on Twitter) that we carry at the shop and have featured at a wine tasting or two before. He'll also be giving a short lecture on fine chocolate and its relationship to fermented, terroir-driven products like wine during our tasting on Friday the 13th. I mention him both because he's worth checking out and also because the Kansas City Star just featured him and his chocolate in an article in their food section. The article is here and here is a excerpt:

Blame it on France. That’s where Alan McClure first savored the chocolate that sparked his epiphany.

French chocolate was “so unlike anything I’d ever had here or even imagined could exist,” McClure says. “That changed my whole perspective on chocolate.”

McClure returned home to Columbia, where chocolate grew into an all-absorbing passion. He tasted more European and American bars, read books and called artisanal chocolate makers with questions. He experimented with cacao beans (the raw material for chocolate, pronounced kah-KAY-oh), wrote a business plan and searched out equipment.

In 2007 McClure opened Patric Chocolate and began making micro-batches of dark chocolate bars using organic cacao beans from Madagascar. Never heard of such a thing? You’re not alone. Nestle, Mars and other mass-production behemoths long dominated the U.S. chocolate industry until 1996.