Well, we've got a sweet treat to wrap things up this evening in a city known for its craft breweries and culinary creativity.

Few people realize the queen city is also home to some passionate chocolatiers.

Eccentric, devoted, and absolutely serious about their craft.

Carolina Impact's Chris Clark introduces us to two who are reshaping what chocolate means.

They'll teach us that great chocolate isn't made in a factory, it's made with obsession.

♪ Come with me - [Chris] Willy Wonka made chocolate feel like fantasy.

♪ In a world of pure imagination ♪ - [Chris] But for these two, chocolate began as a memory, the kind they grew up with in Europe, richer, deeper, unforgettable.

- I grew up eating that chocolate, and at the age of 12 we immigrated to the US.

I went looking for my chocolate and I couldn't find it.

- [Chris] One chases it back to the bean, the other reshapes it through art and reinvention, different paths toward the same taste.

- I always loved that chocolate that, you know, like really melted in your, like in your mouth.

I was wanting to recreate the chocolates that I had as a kid.

- [Chris] At her shop, The Underground Truffle, Esa Weinreb makes chocolates her clients love.

Her path to the sweet life was less than straight.

Her father was a chef and she did go to college, but not for culinary arts, it was for.

- Mechanical engineering.

- Wait, what?

Of all the things.

Not exactly the magic ingredient.

- I know.

It was like, why?

- [Chris] Fair question.

Can't wait for this answer.

- They talked me into, they're like, we need women in engineering.

- [Chris] So she did the practical thing, earned a degree and built a solid career in interior design.

But one problem never went away.

- When I would go visit my cousins, I would always bring back chocolate that I purchased there in Europe, 'cause we still couldn't find any good chocolate here.

- [Chris] It started with suitcases, chocolate smuggled home for friends, then truffles made locally led to a supplier in South America shipping in bulk and inside one shipment, something unexpected.

- They sent me a VHS tape of their process.

I put that tape in there and I watched this.

It was like 30 minutes long and I'm like, oh my god, beans, they grow on a tree and they come from a pod and then they do this and they ferment them and roast them and like I had no clue.

- [Chris] Looking to make her product more authentic, she took a trip to Costa Rica with friends.

There, at a place called Coco Ethica, she didn't just tour a farm, she had an education.

- They had this big outdoor fire that they roast the beans on.

After they roasted them, they had like a, they put it in a bag, and I think they had like a rolling pin or a big stick and they cracked it all up.

- [Chris] She brought those lessons back to Charlotte, not just to improve the flavor, but to understand chocolate from the inside out.

- When you put the nibs inside of the drum and you turn on the machine, you don't add heat.

It's just the friction of those wheels turning and rubbing on the bottom plate of that stone plate that creates friction.

So it starts to melt.

- [Chris] It's part science, part patience, something Esa is eager to share, teaching classes on not just how chocolate is made, but where it comes from.

- How it sort of became sophisticated over time, but it started in such a simplistic way, and the types of tools that were used in ancient cultures to create the chocolate from scratch.

- She walked us through the whole process, from meeting farmers in Puerto Rico all the way through to her hand, you know, roasting and hand shucking chocolate.

It gave me a new appreciation.

- The actual fruit pod to like, rutting that ferment and roast and grind.

And she like makes the chocolate from start to finish and like that's a local thing, which I would never have guessed that would be happening in Charlotte.

- [Chris] Esa chases chocolate back to the source, the bean, the grind, the science.

But for another chocolatier in Charlotte, the obsession isn't where chocolate comes from, it's how it's supposed to feel when it melts, a taste he remembers from growing up in Europe.

- I make chocolates that I like.

If I don't like 'em, you won't see 'em in my box.

Period.

- [Chris] That stubborn streak.

It's not new.

Marvin's whole career has been built on detail and reinvention.

- I started out as a DJ after school, just you know, as a side gig.

I loved doing that.

Then I went to trade school, become a hair and makeup artist back in Germany.

I worked in a few salons in Germany, and then I got an offer from an agency, (indistinct) agency in LA.

- [Chris] From Germany to Los Angeles, he built a career working with top talent, top stylists and no room for mistakes.

It was long days, high standards, and some of the best in the business trusting him with their image.

For Marvin creativity kept changing form from hair and makeup to designing clothes, to making jewelry.

- I always loved to be crafty, creative.

I switched more into like adding sterling silver to it.

So before it was all like leather cuffs and that kind of stuff.

So then I went into the jewelry stuff, and since I've known a lot of stylists, I would give them jewelry to use on set.

- [Chris] After a stint as a chef, and time spent counseling others, life stepped in with a hard reset.

The recession hit, jobs disappeared, and Marvin took the work that was available.

- 2008 happened, so all the money crashed, everything gone, right.

I had to find some kind of job.

The only thing that was like available was a clerk position in a, it was called confectionary.

- [Chris] It wasn't the plan, but it put him back where he had started, surrounded by sweets and possibility.

- I went to the owner and I'm like, asked, can I maybe do some truffles and see how they go?

And he's like, yeah, try it out.

- [Chris] One batch turned into another, customers came back and before long, chocolate stopped being an experiment and became the thing that followed him all the way to Charlotte.

After years on the road, Marvin wasn't just looking for a new city, he was looking for a place that felt familiar.

- We came for a visit and I was like, this is really nice here.

It's very much Charlotte, or even North Carolina is very much kind of like Germany.

It, you know, it has like the mountains, it has a lot of forests.

- [Chris] What started as a small experiment didn't stay small for long.

In just a few years, Marvin's chocolates began earning serious recognition, including Charlotte Consumer Choice Awards for best Chocolate Shop in both 2025 and '26.

A best of 2025 nod from business rates, and national recognition from the Worldwide Certified Business Review Board as one of the best businesses of 2025.

Not bad for someone who says he's just making chocolate he likes.

- The responses and the faces of people that warms my heart.

- [Chris] Two chocolatiers, two very different approaches.

One standard, make something you love.

For Carolina Impact, I'm Chris Clark.