Skiing Chocolate Perfect Together
Chocolate and skiing are both indulgences which is why they’re perfectly matched.
A trip the NY Chocolate Show inspires some thoughts on why skiing and chocolate go so well together, and why chocolate is so readily available in ski country.
The word came down, as it does annually, about Keystone Resort’s Days of Chocolate festival, which got me thinking about skiing and chocolate.
Actually, what really got me thinking about snow sports and chocolate was the New York Chocolate Show. My brave spouse and I wandered into the show two weeks back. It being early on a Sunday morning, we expected few people to be there.
The place was packed.
And why not? Here were chocolatiers from around the world showing off their goods and offering apres-breakfast samples.
We stopped at a booth offering Berkshire Bark, a combo of Belgian chocolate mixed with roasted nuts, citrus zest and dried fruit. Tasty and crunchy.
Great Barrington, Mass., is perhaps most famed for being an summer performing arts Mecca. But, it’s also a stone’s throw from some pretty fine western Massachusetts skiing—Jiminy Peak, Catamount, Berkshire East and Butternut Basin, specifically. One could easily stop in at The Marketplace store, where Berkshire Bark was invented, to pick up a mid-ski pick-me-up, or several pounds of chocolate for that matter.
Nothing picks up the middle of a ski day like good chocolate.
Kevin Schmitz has been producing Berkshire Bark for four years, originally by hand. Now production is expanding, and he creates four kinds—White Lightning, Mocha Buzz, Tropical Heat and Midnight Harvest—which he is starting to distribute more widely. But, for now, I’d say stop in when you’re skiing the Berkshires.
Of course, skiers and snowboarders can find fine chocolate all over snow country.
New Hampshire’s Mt. Washington Valley Ski Touring & Snowshoe Foundation stages an annual Chocolate Festival in late March.
The Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory can be found in Vail, Crested Butte, Park City, Whistler and many others.
And then there’s always the traditional apres-ski hot chocolate. Preferably spiked with a shot of something.
Yeah, I’d say snowsliding and chocolate go together pretty well.
Related Article: Keystone’s 36 Days of Chocolate
