Rooted in Chocolate
Engineer-turned-chocolatier Esa Weinreb ’83 is leading Charlotte’s craft chocolate movement.
Photos by Amy Hart and courtesy of Underground Truffle.
A Love for Chocolate, Born in Europe
Esa Weinreb’s story begins in Europe, where summers in her Sicilian grandmother’s kitchen sparked a lifelong love for food and flavor. Born and raised in London by an Italian mother and a French father who was a chef, she grew up surrounded by the scents, flavors and rituals of scratch-made meals. There, food wasn’t just nourishment; it was art, culture and family tradition.
Weinreb’s family moved to Charlotte when she was 12 years old, and she couldn’t find the rich, distinctive chocolates she’d grown up with. Trips back to Europe always meant a suitcase full of chocolate. Eventually, she stopped sourcing her chocolate abroad and started crafting her own — never imagining how far it would lead.
Engineering Her Path and Then Redesigning It
Encouraged to pursue a field with few women, Weinreb studied mechanical engineering at UNC Charlotte, one of just four women in her cohort. After graduation, she worked in Gaston County designing textile machinery and helping transition their hand-drawn drafting systems to CAD. But the technical work left little space for the creativity she was eager to explore.
That led to architecture, and eventually interior design, including studies at IED, Istituto Europeo di Design in Milan, Italy, and a successful run with Charlotte’s established multidisciplinary design firm, LS3P and her own interior design firm. Weinreb had found her stride blending precision with creativity. But on weekends, she was quietly crafting something new: her own chocolate.
A Taste of Tradition: Esa Weinreb’s passion for chocolate began in her Sicilian grandmother’s kitchen, where food was art, culture and connection.
Chocolate as Craft, Chocolate as Cause
In 2015, Weinreb gifted a bar of her homemade chocolate to a friend. That simple act sparked everything. She began researching the craft chocolate movement and experimenting with flavor, technique and sourcing. By 2017, she was on a cacao farm in Costa Rica, learning firsthand how beans are fermented, dried, roasted and transformed. That farm, run by Don Castro, was her introduction to ethical sourcing and the beginning of her commitment to knowing the full story behind every bar she makes.
Ethically Sourced, Personally Traced: A visit to a Costa Rican cacao farm inspired Weinreb’s commitment to ethical sourcing and knowing every step of her chocolate’s journey.
A Twist on Tradition: Weinreb’s orange peel truffle blends citrus brightness with rich dark chocolate — a nod to classic flavors with a bold, modern edge.
She became a member of the nonprofit Yellow Seed and was invited to “chocolate camp” in New York — a gathering of craft makers and experts from around the country. This connection also led her to the cacao farm in Costa Rica. At each stop, she deepened her understanding of how origin, fermentation and farming techniques affect flavor. In Charlotte, she invested in her first melanger, a traditional stone grinder needed to refine chocolate, and began creating recipes in earnest.
Bean to Bar, With a Designers Eye
In 2018, Weinreb opened The Underground Truffle, her own chocolate lab in Plaza Midwood — a cozy, creative space that doubles as both production kitchen and community gathering place. She earned certification from the agricultural department and began selling bars made from single-origin beans sourced directly from farms in Peru, Costa Rica and Colombia.
Each bar is small batch and flavor specific, crafted from beans that are fermented for five to six days, sun dried for a week and carefully roasted. She adds just enough organic coconut palm sugar for balance. The result: clean, intense flavor with notes of fruit, spice or earth, depending on the origin.
Designed to Delight: Wrapped in bold, custom packaging, every bar reflects its flavor, origin and the artistry behind its creation.
Wrapped in vibrant, custom-designed packaging that reflects the origin and artistry behind each batch, Weinreb’s chocolate bars are as visually distinctive as they are flavorful. The colorful, rainforest-inspired designs are mirrored in the studio’s wallpaper and nod to
the beans’ journey from tropical farm to Charlotte kitchen.
Her inclusions are intentional and imaginative: berries from Peru, salt from the Andean flats, Sicilian pistachios or house made hazelnut paste. Her latest favorite? A chai bar made with her own garden-grown ginger, hand ground with warm spices.
Flavors with a Story: Weinreb’s bars feature imaginative inclusions like chilis and goji berries — each chosen for its unique flavor and sense of place.
A Community of Chocolate and Creativity
Weinreb’s studio isn’t a typical chocolate shop. The Underground Truffle is a working lab and creative space, open by appointment and during special events. Over time, it has become a hub for curated experiences like chocolate-making workshops, birthday parties and
“Truffles and Bubbles” nights. She also has hosted meditation sessions andSoulCollage® events, all designed to help people slow down and savor.
The Underground Truffle: Weinreb’s cozy chocolate lab in Plaza Midwood doubles as a studio, classroom and community hub for creative events.
Crafted from the Heart: Hand-poured heart shaped bonbons truffles reflect the care and creativity behind every piece.
For the past seven years Weinreb has partnered with UNC Charlotte’s Botanical Gardens during Valentine’s Day, donating proceeds from special events like “Ganache in the Gardens,” and the annual orchid sale and creating bars inspired by the plants she encountered there. In one memorable exchange, she traded a chocolate bar for a tour of the UNC Charlotte Botanical Gardens in order to see the live cacao tree with Director Jeff Gillman — an emblem of her deep connection to both nature and craft.
What's Next
As Weinreb’s following has grown, so has her vision. She’s thinking about starting a school for chocolate making so others can make their own chocolate at home. She dreams of bringing more home-scale chocolate machines to families, making bean-to-bar creation accessible and fun. “With the rising cost of grocery store chocolate, why not make your own healthy version with no added fillers, just two ingredients, cocoa beans and sugar.”
What’s Next: This fall, she’s launching classes to help others craft bean-to-bar chocolate at home — making the process as personal as the product.
Through it all, she remains committed to the ethical sourcing and transparent storytelling that define the craft chocolate movement.
“I’m only the third person to touch the beans,” she said. “The farmer, the fermentors and me. That’s it. And I want people to taste and appreciate that story.”
For Esa Weinreb, chocolate isn’t just dessert; it’s memory, science, design and culture — and a delicious way to connect the dots between all the lives, places and passions that brought her here.
Keep up with Esa Weinreb and The Underground Truffle
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