Blog
Mar
10
Behind the Scenes of a Chocolate Shop and a Local Winery
Posted by
at
14:07
It's time to play on your sweet tooth, and show you the intricate processes of what goes on behind the scenes of a chocolate shop and a local winery.
Chelsea Pompeani stopped at Peggy Gray Candies in North Springfield and Arrowhead Wine Cellars in North East, to take you behind closed doors in her Target 24 report.
Since 1922 Peggy Gray Candies has been satisfying the cravings of the North Springfield community and beyond with their delectable chocolate.
Jon Holliday is the owner of Peggy Grays. He tells us this is a family business.
His grandma, Marguerite "Peggy" Gray, started the candy shop. When she passed away his parents took it over, and now 91 years later, Jon is the boss and things are running just as his grandma wished.
Jon holliday, owner Peggy Gray Candies, says: "We're very small. We're just a family business. My wife works in here occassionally around the holidays and everything. You can see a lot of people stay here forever, and my grandma made candy til she was 92."
At the candy shop, they make over 100 different types of candy. The business is mostly chocolate-based.
But they do have a few fan favorites, their thin mints and specialty buttercreams.
Holliday, "It takes about four hours to get buttercreams going in the beater and cooled and everything, and then I roll them."
And from there, Alice, who's been with the shop for 65 years, hand dips every single buttercream with home-made chocolate, that Holliday and his staff makes fresh daily.
So now that you got your chocolate fix, why not top it off with a little wine?
What you're seeing is the last step in a rather detailed process at Arrowhead Wine Cellar.
Arrowhead has over thirty different kinds of wine, from the grape on the vine to the wine in the bottle. Owner Nick Mobilia says they've come a long way with their top of the line machines.
Nick Mobilia, owner Arrowhead Wine Cellars, says: "We're trying to stay diverse, so buiness doesn't rely on any one item."
Here's how the process works. They've got one employee stacking bottles to make sure they're sanitized.
From there, the wine is poured into the bottles and moved along the belt.
Once the bottle gets to the end, they're capped. But Mobilia says they want to stray away from your everyday corks.
Mobilia, "A finger comes down and pushes on the caps, pushes it down. And then those wheels will cut threads right on the cap, so they can't come up."
Speaking of staying ahead of the curve, Arrowhead is doing just that with their wine in a pouch.
Mobilia, "The nice thing about this is you can take these, you can put them in a freezer, you can bend to shape, put them in a backpack. If you're riding a motorcycle, instead of getting glass, you can get the pouches, put them in your knapsacks and not have to worry about two bottles hitting eachother and breaking. If you're going to a beach where they don't allow cans or glass, they'll probably allow this because nobody can get hurt on it."
