We have wrappers..and sweet, sweet beer..

After many, MANY long weeks of tweaks, color changes, size changes etc, etc we finally have a wrapper that we're pretty dang proud of! Massive thanks to Bryce McCloud of Isle of Printing and Joel Anderson of Anderson Design Group for collaborating with us to give Olive & Sinclair the look we've sought after for many a month. This is what you will see in all the fine shops and restaurants of Nashville in the months to come! Moving forward, we'll be developing color variations on this wrapper to represent the different flavor combinations yet to come. When in doubt, always refer to the circle in the top left hand corner to determine the cocoa percentage or what additional ingredients are in the bar you'll be purchasing. We have some pretty cool flavors in the works, so stay tuned to see when and where you can find them!
In other exciting news, our good friend Jason Malone of Birmingham's Good People Brewing Co. is in the process of utilizing Olive & Sinclair's slow roasted cocoa nibs to do some experimental chocolate stout batches. We're not sure what the result will be, but we're pretty excited to see how it turns out. Learn more about that here.

And last but not least, our friends (and neighbors) over at Mitchell Deli created a jalepeno and chocolate bread pudding this week, using our very own Olive & Sinclair cocoa nibs! We were fortunate enough to snag a taste before it ran out! Next time you're in Mitchell's, take a peek at their hot bar and just maybe they'll do an encore production.

O&S logo honored by Print magazine..

Just wanted to quickly report that Print magazine has honored Nashville's own Anderson Design Group and Olive & Sinclair by choosing our logo to be featured in their 2009 Regional Design Annual. According to Print's website, "The Regional Design Annual, is the most comprehensive survey of graphic design in the United States-and one of the biggest issues to hit the graphic design industry each year." Big congrats to Joel and the gang at Anderson. Cheers!

man of la conche..

As of approx. 10:30 last Friday our final machine finally arrived by way of Arbroath, Scotland from MacIntyre Chocolate Systems. I think I've mentioned this before but it's painfully obvious(especially after laying eyes on it) that this guy really puts the busted conche refiner we purchased before to shame - in size and in quality. Once we removed the massive crate from the delivery truck and began carefully removing the crate planks to inspect the machine this was apparent. We then spent the better part of a 100 degree day getting 5,500 lbs. through the Olive & Sinclair bay door and then through yet an even smaller one to it's final destination at the back of the shop. Thanks to Randy and family again for all their assistance.

Now that we have this beast in place it'll be wired, plumbed and Scott and I will start running all those carefully roasted nibs, brown sugar and cocoa butter through it. We've gotten so many product ideas and have just finished pairing down which to send out the door first. Stay tuned guys...we're very, very close.

The Stone Grinder..

With about two more weeks left before our new MacIntyre conche refiner shows up on our doorstep from Scotland we're both busy wrapping up a lot of finishing touches at the shop. Lots of beans are arriving, Bryce is carving out our wrapper art press, bulk bar packages are being developed, signs are being designed, refrigeration getting sorted..the list goes on and on. In the meantime we've also gotten ourselves a stone grinder from 'ol Mexico. The reason we decided to do an initial grind before concheing is so instead of putting whole cocoa nibs staright into the conche with the other ingredients we can first grind down the nibs to a liquid. This will, in effect, lower the amount of stress on the conche. We also think that keeping in step with southern artisan chocolate making that nothing but a natural stone initial grind is order. It's yet another amazing (and simple) machine and will give us yet another device to tinker with until the conche arrives.