Bite Sized: David Herrick of Foundry Chocolate on Their Annual Whisky Bar
•David Nilsen
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Welcome to Bean to Barstool Bite Sized, where we spend about 5 minutes on a specific topic in craft beer, craft chocolate, or artisan drinks. Today we're talking with David Herrick of Foundry Chocolate in New Zealand. David tells us the story behind their esteemed Whisky bars released annually. Enjoy!
You can listen to the entire episode this clip is from here.
Hey everyone, welcome to Bean to Bar Stool Bite-sized, where we spend about five minutes with some of our favorite people from craft beer or craft chocolate. Today we hear from David Herrick of Foundry Chocolate in New Zealand. Here, David tells us the story about how Foundry's esteemed whiskey chocolate bar collaboration with Thompson Distillery got started. Enjoy.
SPEAKER_01
And then you, with anything I do, you start to get more and more niche and specialized and discover all sorts of things. In New Zealand, there are there's been a history of making whiskey and it kind of come to a bit of a resurgence in the last 20 or so years. And Thompson whiskey were kind of one of the leaders in doing that. They're privately held. And I have a collection of their whiskey and I drink their whiskey, and we were kind of the the reason this came around and working with them was because we don't we make unflavored chocolate bars where the flavor in the bar comes from how we work with the cacao and the origins we're sourcing and our roasting and making techniques. So we've kind of boxed ourselves into a corner where we don't add flavor into our bar, so we don't add fresh-dried raspberries or mint or some other kind of wonderfully fantastic conclusion. So if we're going to add a flavour, it had to be something really special and it had to be something technically quite difficult to do. I was like, well, hang on, I could use whiskey. And I had a bottle of whiskey lying around, it was something I didn't like drinking. And I was like, well, I've got some nibs lying around. I was working with some, had some spare Camino Verde at that point in time. And I was like, well, why don't I soak the nibs in the whiskey and then bring them back to the same static weight and see what happens. And it worked. And I couldn't get over the fact that it worked. And here I was adding this liquid, effectively liquid to chocolate and turning it back into chocolate again. And it tasted absolutely epic. Um shared the bar with Lou Cohen Smith, who you may know. Um, he had the chocolate bar at that point in time, and he was just blown away by it. And so I was like, well, I've got to do this properly. Why don't I get in touch with my favorite New Zealand whiskey maker? And so I very cheekily messaged Rachel Thompson through their website contact form and said, Hey guys, we're a chocolate maker, we'd love to use your whiskey and something. Would you be interested? And they came back saying, uh, hell yeah. And that was in 2020 that we started that relationship. And they were fantastic to work with and are fantastic to work with, and they were right behind, and they were kind of a couple of years ahead of us in their journey. And working with another New Zealand-based manufacturer, foodie artisan maker, with kind of the the world in their sights, doing punching way above their weight with what they do, and they were so supportive to work with. And, you know, as that relationship's developed, we've started to get access to special casks. Um, if Matt's been tinkering around with something, he'll draw down a sample from some esoteric weird thing he's been working on, and we won't get told what it is until we've actually made something with it and have some fun with things that way. And as the New Zealand whiskey industry has evolved in the last kind of five to ten years, there's been some fantastic new makers and distillers join the New Zealand whiskey scene. We've just loved working with Thompson and keep working with them again and again as their support and what they're doing and their ethos and how they've remained privately held. It just resonates really well with us.
SPEAKER_00
You can find out more about Foundry Chocolate and all the cool details behind this once-a-year whiskey bar in my full conversation with David from back in May of this year. I'll put a link to that in the show notes. The music today was by my dear friend Anna P. S. My name is David Nilsen. Thanks for listening to Bean to Barstool Bite-sized.
