Cocoa and Creativity: Crafting Chocolate Dreams
Join Kassi Kincaid for an engaging conversation with Kevin Wenzel, owner of Wiseman House Chocolates in Hico, Texas. With over 28 years of experience as a chocolatier, Kevin shares his journey from a food-focused upbringing to mastering the art of chocolate-making. Tune in to explore the sweet intersection of chocolate and creativity, and learn how Kevin's journey continues to inspire others to pursue their passions.
Transcript:
Kassi Kincaid (00:00):
Welcome to The Edge of Creativity Podcast. I'm your host, Kassi Kincaid. And joined with me today is Chocolatier, Kevin Wenzel of Wiseman House Chocolates in HiCo, Texas. Kevin, thank you so much for being here today.
Kevin Wenzel (00:17):
Thank you. I'm glad to be here. Thank you so much for the honor of allowing me to be chatting with you today.
Kassi Kincaid (00:25):
I am so excited to delve into your delicious world of chocolate. Not only specifically the chocolate, but kind of unpacking it as far as creativity goes. So let's kick it off for our listeners today. Can you describe your path of becoming a chocolatier?
Kevin Wenzel (00:44):
Sure. Right out of high school, I couldn't wait to get out of my little town and went to college, loved being in an education space, learning, studying, and I studied art was my background art and all the skills crafts of ceramics, painting, drawing, working with fibers, fabric, stuff like that. And some of my last works of art and drawings and printmaking was about food. And because I fell in love with cooking during that time of being out on my own, learning to cook for myself, and I fell in love with flavors, putting things together that were edible and also nourishing.
(01:45):
And so whenever I had the opportunity, I would cook for other people. And I really enjoyed when other people cooked for me because it was no longer just cooking for sustainability, but just cooking for pleasure. And even though mom and dad are both great cooks and in my town and in my county, I think we were some of the people that carried a special magazine about gourmet food. But anyway, I grew up in a food establishment. It was the first delicatessen in Hamilton County, and we had 48 different cheeses. We made our own meats and sausages with our own animals. And so I grew up in that environment of cooking, baking, and making. And then college, I didn't even think about food until my last year when I actually had to cook. And then I really enjoyed cooking after that, but then it kind of morphed into chocolate after I wanted to get out of the big city after college and after college work.
(02:53):
I really did not enjoy the big cities. And so I came back to our county and talking to my father, he said, I think you should go into chocolate, Kevin. I think that would be a great niche for you. And we had bought this wonderful Victorian queen install house and being right at the intersection of a major rural intersection in the state of Texas, I had plenty of traffic. And still today, after 28 years, I still get people stopping by the store saying they've been passing us for years and finally stopped. And so we still are in business after 28 years doing chocolate things we love. But yeah, it was kind of a path of cooking at home growing up, and then learning to cook for myself. And then cooking not just to sustain me, but for pleasure and making other people happy too. I'm a people pleaser, so I love cooking for other people. And chocolate was just an extension of that chocolate.
(04:11):
It's a little more fruit. Well, not forgiving. I had no idea people were interested in chocolate until I was living overseas in eastern Europe, and some people were just crazy about chocolate. I just had no idea. And when I came back here, I saw that same interest that people had, that chocolate was a lot more sought after than other foods. And then when I was in the shop and making our own chocolates, I had the pleasure of experimenting with chocolates from different origins and then playing with those flavors of those origins. For example, some chocolate from Madagascar would be a lot more fruity or chocolate from the islands of Sao Tome or some African countries might be more nutty, like Ugandan chocolate's a little more nutty. And if they have those flavor profiles, why not play with those? So the Madagascar chocolate, I introduced raspberry to it, but also I prepare just as it is so you really taste the fruit of the chocolate. And then another piece would've raspberry, black raspberry, or American raspberry. Those would all have different flavor profiles. But yeah, loving to take a medium like chocolate, playing with it and seeing what I can do with it. Kind of like painting a landscape, I could make it look like a photograph or I could play with it and have some emotion with the landscape. But chocolate, it's amazing. Some of my customers have a personal emotion when they're eating one of our chocolate truffles. Almost like taking communion is a very personal deep impact. And sometimes I sense that and get that from our customers. Anyway.
Kassi Kincaid (06:33):
That's amazing. So Kevin, you touched a little bit on it. So the creativity of it. So you touched on the creativity of the flavors. Can we delve a little bit into the creativity of the different things you make? You don't just make truffles, is that correct?
Kevin Wenzel (06:57):
Right, right. Yeah. So some of the ideas of our pieces will come from requests. Like someone may say, I would love something more crunchy and salty, or I would love to see something combining certain flavors. And sometimes chocolates will come when I'm sleeping and I'll kind of develop in my memory like a dream, and I'll have the idea when I wake up, I'll have to say at six years old, I had a lot more fun creating when I was just starting the business at 33 than at 60 because it was wide open. I could do anything. And not everything made money. Not everybody wanted it, but I had a lot more fun. And it was just wide open at 60, I still get to be creative, I get to have fun, and there's not such a high risk in it. But I dunno, it seemed like I created a lot more pieces when I was younger. Not that that's important, but let me think back. Recently, we were thinking about a request for cherries and things that are cherry.
(08:22):
I love cherries. I love cherries with just like are. I was up in Washington in 1998 and had my first Rain cherries, and I just thought they were fantastic. It's hard and sweet. It's the first time I ever had a delightful drink that I'd never had before. Chai latte. I tried to introduce the flavors of chai, the Texas, and nobody got it. Nobody was interested, nobody understood it. And I made a try and people just didn't take to it. A lot's changed since 1998, so I think people know what chai is around here. Back to the cherry thing we were doing, I had a memory, a young memory of going to a restaurant and where someone did cherries jubilee, and it was flambe at the tableside and I was young, and some rum was poured down a spiral of an orange peel into this pan, and they cooked in melan all the flavors and put it on top of ice cream. I thought it was the best thing in the world. It was just cherries, a little orange, a little bit of rum. I think they might've had some spice in it, but it was such a great simple treat. So I tried recently, it was a couple of weeks ago, I tried doing a cherries jubilee with marshmallow,
(10:04):
And it turned out really well. I could still tweak it and have more fun with it by making it a little more appealing, visually, a little more easier to eat. So there's still room to play with it. But yes, there's some really wonderful flavors of cherry, walnut, orange, vanilla, and then that wonderfulness of marshmallow, fresh marshmallow, which just melts the mouth real fast.
Kassi Kincaid (10:37):
That sounds delicious.
Kevin Wenzel (10:39):
It's a nice piece. So I think right now we're calling it black forest simply because cherries jubilee sounds, I don't like the name of the marshmallow, but the walnuts, I think black forest sounds more clear .
Kassi Kincaid (10:58):
As far as chocolates. Can you unpack that a little bit for what would be one of the things that you would tell people just about maybe a misconception they have of chocolate or something they don't know about chocolate?
Kevin Wenzel (11:15):
Okay. Well, chocolate is a seed. It's from a seed, just like peanut butter is from a seed or almond butter, it's just processed differently. A lot of almond butter can just be chopped up with a blade, whereas chocolate and cocoa beans have to be crushed and sheared with granite between two pieces of granite in order for that shell to be broken up and made smooth. Now you can get chocolate that's very coarse, and we sell some chocolate called TAZA. It's a coarsely prepared chocolate and the discs, and they're made using machines from Mexico where people in Oaxaca would prepare their own chocolates for chocolate drinks.
(12:12):
But a good fine and refined chocolate will be real smooth using granite. And then the chocolate that we get is prepared in Italy for the most part. Some of it's from Belgium, but they're bringing in the beans from Uganda and parts of Africa and down in Africa and Uganda. They will actually take the pods off the cocoa tree, open them up, scoop out the fruit, and the fruit will have a seed in it like cherries do. So they're pulling all that fruit out, and then they break the fruit away from the seed. They want the seed, so they break down the fruit by just like you would an apple, peel an apple, set it on a table, it's going to break down or a peach to get that pit out. And so they do the same thing by letting oxygen and good bacteria break down that fruit while it's doing it. It's fermenting and you can actually change the flavor and how it's fermented, how long it's fermented, how much stirring you do.
(13:27):
But because you have antibacteria that's anti, let's see, what's the word? Anti oxygen and loves oxygen, anaerobic. Anaerobic and anaerobic and aerobic. So there's different bacterias do different things to that fruit to break it down and ferment. And after the fermentation, it's usually three days. Those beans are dried and Africa, they just dry em in the sun on large cement slabs. If it rains, they put a small roof over it. And Papua New Guinea, it's always raining, so they dry the beans with wood embers and that ember warms the air, dries the cocoa beans, but also imparts a slight smoky flavor to it. And I have a friend down in Tomball, he loves that flavor. And so he uses only Papua New Guinea beans with his chocolates, that smokiness kind of thing.
(14:44):
Yeah. And that's chocolate. Depending on where that chocolate comes from, it's going to have a flavor and that flavor impacts your customer. And my job is to make sure that's a great impact and that's a really flavorful piece of chocolate, not just a ho hum chocolate because anybody can make ho hum chocolate. You can go to any drug store or grocery store and get just okay, chocolate. So my job is to make it really exceptional so that they will come back or order online. And then chocolate that they love to give away. There's a country and the far east in the Middle East, and they give chocolate all the time to their friends or honored guests, but nobody eats the chocolates. They're just after the packaging. They don't really care what it tastes like because nobody eats it.
(15:51):
So it's just a weird thing in America, we love our packaging and some people are just okay with the packaging. They just want to see what kind of package it is, but people eat it. And then I don't know if they have never had good chocolate or they just expected to be just hum chocolate, but for the most part, people have never had fresh chocolate. So when they come to me, it's an easy sell because one bite, they're like, oh my gosh, I've never had fresh chocolate before, or I've never had chocolate that's good. And for the most part, it's just fresh. I deliver twice a week to the store. Our kitchen, our production kitchen is three blocks away, and we sell 95% of our product that we make every week right there in that little store in Hico. Yeah, we do have an online business and we ship out product every Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday we only ship. So I want to make sure it gets there before the weekend and the heat of the weekend and sitting in a truck somewhere. But yeah, almost 95% of our businesses have that store and people look at it and this little town thinking nobody can make a living doing that but we have 15 families that depend on that we employ, and they're the main breadwinners.
Kassi Kincaid (17:24):
Wow, that's so incredible. And I love how, like you said, all the different chocolates around the world, they have their own unique flavors, so you have to take those flavors and add your creative spin, kind of like what's already naturally there. So that takes another level of creativity,
Kevin Wenzel (17:48):
Right? Products. Yeah. So I'm responsible. I feel responsible to my customers that they get something that's amazing and there's some single origin chocolate that it tastes okay but with a little tweaking, my Texas customers would really enjoy it. And so not to downplay any chocolate from any particular island or any place, but some of it's just not very tasty. So I have to really pump it up with some flavors or crunch or, yeah. So I think about chocolate audibly, how they're eating it, is it messy on them? Will they be frustrated with what falls off the chocolate onto their shirt? Does it taste great? Does it have a snap when they bite into it? Real chocolate's going to have a snap on the curvature. And yeah, it should be fresh. If it's not fresh, if it doesn't taste great, I don't need to be selling it. We have a mantra, we win or lose in the first bite, and that's important to me to stay in business.
Kassi Kincaid (19:12):
That's a great mantra. I remember you telling me that a couple years ago when I came and visited the shop. Yeah, you win or lose, is it? You win or lose in the first bite? Yeah,
Kevin Wenzel (19:22):
Yeah. We win or lose. We win or lose in the first bite.
Kassi Kincaid (19:26):
And we did the taste test with some people . We were like, okay, do that first bite and the crunch of that first bite, the breaking of the outer shell of the truffles. That was just incredible.
Kevin Wenzel (19:44):
Yeah, it's got to be great. Otherwise, we're just grocery store quality. There are some great grocery stores out there now, but I did not grow up in any great grocery store that had amazing chocolate in it.
Kassi Kincaid (20:03):
Yeah, no, absolutely. So Kevin, you've already kind of described a little bit about the impact of your fresh chocolates, your employment of so many families in your small town, and how else would you describe any additional things, the impact of how Wiseman House Chocolates has impacted Hico and the world?
Kevin Wenzel (20:28):
Thank you. Well, we've been teaching chocolate classes for the last 15 years.
Kassi Kincaid (20:47):
I forgot about your chocolate classes. I'm glad you mentioned that.
Kevin Wenzel (20:50):
Yeah, so we've been doing chocolate classes for 17 years now. I can't believe it's that long. And I know within the state of Texas, we've had at least seven people start their own stores and we've had international students come up or they've started a store and they wanted to figure out, okay, how can we do this better? And they were importing finished product and they started making their own. I've been invited to other countries to teach people how to start their own. Some countries I have not been to because it was just, it wasn't good timing.
(21:35):
But yeah, people told me, why teach other people how you do it? And I said, well, I can give them my recipe and they can give them my philosophy. But it's really up to them how they are success in their store. If they cut costs and ingredients or other things like that, they're not going to win. But if they stay true to what the finish is, just making a great product and respecting your customers, I think they'll win. And I'm happy to say a lot of those are women owned businesses. They saw an opportunity to support theirselves, their small family, and they did it and they're still doing it.
(22:34):
Yeah. And we of the chocolate companies have told me we've impacted the state of Texas and the chocolate appreciation within Texas. I remember the first time I did a class, we were at a really nice grocery store, I would call it a gourmet store. And they sold out of all the classes, we had three classes. They sold out within just a week. And then I said, well, if those are in the morning, let's do another set of classes in the afternoon. And then they sold out of those. So I was teaching all day for three days, I think it was three months in a row. And then I thought, you, I can do this in Hico. So we started doing our own thing in our chocolate studio here in Hico. And we've sold, I don't know what it is, about 2024. But every class that I opened, we sold out on, and I filled up the month of July. And we're into August with classes. And it's a lot of classes. I've never had this many classes or this big of this many people asking for chocolate classes. I've had three calls today and I was able to fit 'em in, but really it makes the classes too big if I had more than 10 people. So we keep 'em real small.
(24:06):
But yeah, I'm excited by that.
Kassi Kincaid (24:08):
That's amazing. Wow, Kevin, well, thank you so much for just being a champion of chocolate. I mean, being a chocolate, it's so such a niche thing and how you have just literally become an expert in the things that you've created and sharing that with people around the world, that's quite an impact and legacy. So thank you for all of your work.
Kevin Wenzel (24:32):
Thank you. Thank you for having me on, and thanks for doing what you do with folks and creativity and encouraging people to go past where they are right now.
Kassi Kincaid (24:47):
Yes, absolutely. And thank you so much for being on today's episode on The Edge of Creativity Podcast that was all about chocolate, creativity, and impact. And if you have a chance, be sure to check out Wiseman House Chocolates in Hico, Texas. If you don't live here in Texas, you can have them shipped. Or if you ever make your way down here to Texas, be sure to check out Kevin's amazing chocolate classes. You'll not want to miss those. So be sure to follow so you don't miss any of our upcoming episodes. And we'll see you next time. Bye.
Kevin Wenzel (25:25):
Bye-Bye now.
