Chocolate 2010

sofi Gold Winner 2010
Outstanding Chocolate

No stranger to the sofi™ Awards Competition, Poco Dolce’s chocolate won Silver Awards for its Double Shot Espresso Toffee in 2009 and Aztec Chile Tiles in 2008. This year, the company won its first sofi Gold for its distinctive Sesame Toffee Tiles.

In 2002, Kathy Wiley founded San Francisco, Calif.-based Poco Dolce (Italian for “little sweet”), a company dedicated to creating chocolates on the “savory side of sweet.” Wiley takes pride in being among the first to introduce chocolate with sea salt. Even as a child, she remembers, “I loved chocolate and I put salt on everything.”

Her memories helped inspire the sofi-winning product: tiles of bittersweet chocolate filled with crisp, toasted sesame seed toffee and finished with grey sea salt from the coast of Brittany. The unexpected flavor contrast, hand-molded quality, all-natural ingredients and elegant packaging all contribute to the appeal.

In the early stages, Wiley was unsure about how people would react to Sesame Toffee Tiles. “They almost didn’t make it,” she notes. Fortunately, she brought her chocolate experiment to the wine bar across the street from her facility, Yield Wine Bar, where they conducted a tasting and ultimately confirmed that she had a winning product. After serving a variety of Poco Dolce chocolates with red, white and rosé wines, the bar deemed the Sesame Toffee Tiles universal for pairing. “I was surprised,” comments Wiley, “because I never imagined sesame would complement wines so well.”

Poco Dolce’s other newest products include an Olive Oil and Sea Salt Bar, a Strawberry and Balsamic Bar and a Fig and Almond Bar.—Alex Menglide

More About this Product

Crisp, toasted sesame seed toffee is inside a tile of bittersweet chocolate and finished with grey sea salt.  The complexity of flavors—the toasted flavor of the sesame seeds with the bittersweet quality of the chocolate and a touch of saltiness—collaborate well and keep with Poco Dolce’s goal of keeping chocolate on the savory side of sweet.

Suggested retail price: $18/8-piece box (6 ounces). Also available in a 16-piece box.

Website: pocodolce.com

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