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I Don't Want Much

Columnist

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Louisa Hufstader
All articles by columnist

I want candy.  Specifically, I want candy from Le Belge, the high-end chocolate purveyor whose state-of-the-art factory creates mouthwatering wonders behind the generic façade of a corporate park near the Napa County Airport. In fact, the word “candy” seems quaintly inadequate to the task of describing the elegant truffles, plaques and bars Le Belge creates. Specializing in small production runs, the firm is a leading supplier of custom confectionary to the hospitality trade—its jewel-like sweets aren’t available at stores—yet.

My tour of the Le Belge factory had me feeling like young Charlie Bucket. Even the bright-blue disposable hairnet I had to don didn’t hamper the sense of wonder at it all—everyone else in our group of two dozen wore one too, while company president Alan Weisberger also sported a sort of mini-hammock over his beard (he must really hate to shave).

Machines hummed and chuckled, one spitting out gold-foiled discs of chocolate for the Marriott while another produced paper-wrapped squares for the Ritz-Carlton. An assembly line of six women carefully tucked truffles into oval boxes bearing the logo of Castello di Amorosa, which offers chocolates with its tastings. They’re not Oompa-Loompas, these white-coated workers who fill the boxes and run the machines: They’re Laotians from the East Bay, formerly employed by a chocolate competitor that Le Belge purchased a few years back, and Weisberger says, “They’re incredible. These people are so devoted and dedicated.”

People are a big part of the success Le Belge has enjoyed since building its $2 million Napa facility three years ago. “Business has tripled,” Weisberger says. But the company’s prosperity also rests on the quality of its raw materials: The chocolate is shipped in blocks from its native Belgium, and flavored with only the finest ingredients. As I entered the 120-degree-Fahrenheit “Melting Room,” My eyes widened as I surveyed the massive tanks containing 12,000 to 40,000 pounds of chocolate.

From those great cream-colored vats, master chocolatier Chef Sebastien Beline and staff concoct truffles flavored with sea salt, espresso, Key lime and much more. Though these treasures are available only to the carriage trade, Le Belge has recently introduced its first line of chocolate bars designed for retail sales. “Enough people asked us that we said ‘We’ll do it,’” Weisberger says. Look for them soon at your most exclusive shops.

I want information

All over the Web, you can read the same news over and over again: The market is down (or up, occasionally); the government of one country or another is doing this (or that); one famous person is dead, another divorced, a third disgraced, a fourth defiant. But how many of these reverberations in the Internet echo chamber resound with anything I really need to know about my own community? True, the dedicated sites maintained by local newspapers and various other promoters provide a range of perspectives. But my independent fave-du-jour is a recently introduced site called Newsphere Napa (http://newspherenapa.com), the one place I can go to find news and information about the place where I live and work, the people with whom I share it and the environment that contains us all.

“I call it a ‘micronews site,’” says Newsphere Napa creator and editor/administrator Samanda Dorger, a skilled photographer and photojournalist who teaches her craft at community colleges in Napa, Solano and Sonoma counties. Dorger, a print-press veteran, mines government documents and other public information to produce original content for Newsphere Napa, which also offers a “Newsagator” button referring visitors to other media sites.

“I had $27 in startup money. That’s what I invested to get it going,” says Dorger. “I came up with the concept on my own.” That concept is as simple and clear as it is urgently needed: “All the real news comes from local reporting,” Dorger explains, and she knows how to do it: A former photo editor for the Napa Valley Register, Dorger can turn a municipal press release into something that actually conveys useful information to the average citizen.

“It’s essentially local news for people in Napa County, focusing on issues and resources,” continues Dorger, whose greater hopes include expanding Newsphere to other communities. She’s just begun receiving inquiries from potential investors; for more information, visit http://newspherenapa.com. Do note that Newsphere is not for the twitchy-Twittery among us: Dorger issues a new edition once a month, updating as necessary.

I want health insurance

There’s a terrific song by Lucinda Williams called “Passionate Kisses.” Her lyrics begin, “Is it too much to ask?/I want a comfortable bed that won’t hurt my back/Food to fill me up and warm clothes and all that stuff.”

No, that really isn’t too much to ask; but without good health, even those basics aren’t enough—and for artists, health care can be as unaffordable as it is for other self-employed and jobless Americans.

Fortunately—almost miraculously—there’s hope for Napa artists who couldn’t previously afford the monthly premiums for individual health insurance. Arts Council Napa Valley, the nonprofit that rose from near-dead a few years ago to become a major player in both the regional arts scene and municipal policy, has joined forces with the New York City arts organization Fractured Atlas (www.fracturedatlas.org), to offer a group health plan to individual Napa artists and their supporters.

“Many self-employed people have great trouble finding reliable health insurance, and artists often have the toughest time of all,” says Napa muralist Angela Tirrell. “Many of us opt for ‘catastrophic insurance’ that we pay a large monthly fee for, because we cannot pay the even higher monthly cost for ‘regular’ insurance.” Any Arts Council member can apply for the group plan, “parent, teacher, student, patron, as well as artist,” says Executive Director Michelle Williams. Learn more at www.artscouncilnapavalley.org.