Sip and Savor the Past with Chocolate Historian Sophia Rea

Sophia Rea consumes chocolate every day. Her love of the dessert, fostered since childhood, has propelled her illustrious career as a chocolate historian, where she combines her backgrounds in culinary, hospitality and art history. 

Her interactive chocolate tastings put her expertise on full display. By guiding participants through the history of cacao and how to make their own infusions, Sophia elevates the culture and enjoyment of chocolate through art and education. 

She will bring her A Drinking Chocolate Workshop — Past and Present to the Frist Art Museum on Sept. 17 at 6 p.m. The class pulls inspiration from Jeffrey Gibson’s An Indigenous Present exhibit, aiming to balance ancient influence with contemporary culture. “It’s really questioning cacao — what was extracted, what was transformed and what was left behind,” Sophia says. 

Guests will peel cacao beans, make their own chocolate with spices and flowers (used since pre-contact Mesoamerica) and froth their creations with a traditional molinillo — a hand-tuned wooden whisk used in Latin America. 

“I’m not going to tell them what to add or not add,” Sophia says. “They’ll make that decision.” 

Guests can expect flavors ranging from familiar to unfamiliar — a prime opportunity to expand the palate. Once participants craft their concoctions, they’ll sample drinking chocolate from Mexico’s oldest cacao farm, dating back to 1823. The decadent liquid sports a cherry-red color — thanks to special ingredients Sophia will reveal at the workshop. 

The evening aims to ignite the senses, a feat Sophia knows well. She created the first olfactory training tool for chocolate, now used by The World Cocoa Research Center and patisserie chefs and chocolate makers worldwide. 

But that’s not the only way Sophia examines the link between taste and scent. During this fall’s IndigeNash arts festival, where she serves on the planning committee, Sophia will debut a pop-up chocolate history museum, complete with scent activations, tastings and a curated collection of Indigenous, pre-Columbian and European chocolate-making tools. 

Sophia, who has collected such artifacts for more than 25 years, looks forward to offering an immersive glimpse into chocolate’s storied past — a dessert she considers one of life’s great luxuries. 

“We come to wine and caviar and all these luxuries later in life, but chocolate comes to us in childhood,” she says.

To learn more about Sophia's workshop, visit https://fristartmuseum.org/event/artlab-a-drinking-chocolate-workshop/. For more information on IndigeNash, visit https://www.indigenash.org/.