Esa Weinreb

The Underground Truffle is a bean-to-bar chocolate company founded and run by Esa Weinreb in Charlotte, NC. Esa’s background as an Engineer and then an Interior Designer has always been methodical and creative, whether it is creating a beautiful interior space, an outdoor garden or in the kitchen her instinctive curiosity and passion for understanding how things work, combined with her foodie family and love of good dark chocolate lead her to a path that keeps winding with twists and wonderful turns.

Esa’s love for good quality chocolate developed at an early age as a child growing up in Europe. Her French chef father created amazing food and desserts instilling fond memories of watching him work and being rewarded for her quiet observation with samples of his creations. Meals at home were cooked by her Sicilian mother, also a great cook, in a more rustic and of course less structured manner than the formal creations of her father. Esa grew up eating a broad spectrum of fantastic European and Mediterranean foods; what she didn’t realize at the time was that creating delicious food was part of her DNA.

Esa moved to the USA when she was an adolescent, and was quickly introduced to the harsh reality of the American industrialization of food. Chocolate was no longer the rich, dark, earthily stimulating treat she’d become accustomed to in Europe as a child. Chocolate in the US was a very sweet, waxy candy with no chocolate flavor.

“I was never able to develop any sort of appreciation for “candy bars” and as I became an adult I would actually return from my travels to Italy and France with a suitcase full of high-quality European chocolate to be given as gifts and ration until the next trip abroad”.

Due to her inquisitive mind and love of food Esa came to understand the reasons for the superiority of the European chocolate not only from a quality of food basis, but also historically and culturally. She learned about the discovery of cacao as a sacrament among the indigenous peoples of South America until the era of European Colonialism. She learned about the profound chemical effects that the bioactive elements of cacao have on the human brain. She learned about the fantastic antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals that cacao provides. She discovered that in its most basic form cocoa is a fermented Superfood and that the candy product which the industrialized food machine in the US presents