ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. – When visitors think of St. Augustine, they often picture forts, cobblestone streets, and trolley tours.
But a little-known fact is that the nation’s oldest city also played a surprising role in the history of chocolate in North America, and a local candy maker is keeping the tradition alive.
Whetstone Chocolates, a downtown shop and factory that has been making sweets since 1967, welcomed News4JAX for a look inside its production line and its long history as a hometown attraction.
“So you should smell chocolate, do you smell chocolate?” said Virginia Whetstone as she led the tour. “When the staff leaves, and probably when you leave today, your clothes are going to smell like chocolate.”
Henry and Esther Whetstone, Florida natives, opened the business more than five decades ago, selling ice cream and fudge on George Street. Today, their daughter, Virginia, runs the factory that draws tourists for daily tours.
“In the early days, it was not automated,” Virginia said, describing the family’s hand-dipping process. “You were putting your hand in chocolate and dipping an almond, a pecan, a cream or a caramel, and literally dipping it, covering it in chocolate, and putting it on a piece of paper to dry.”
The factory still uses some of the original molds carved by her father in the late 1960s, dolphins and gators fashioned as tributes to Florida, although newer molds have been added over the years. Machines from the 1970s and 1980s now help speed production, and visitors can see chocolates move through a cooling tunnel on guided tours.
Whetstone’s long-running tours became a major tourist draw in the early 1990s, at first conducted by Virginia herself.
The factory’s story ties into a little-known chapter of St. Augustine history: historians say chocolate was introduced to North America when a Spanish ship, the Nuestra Señora del Rosario y el Carmen, arrived at the city in 1641 with crates of cacao after being damaged in a hurricane.
That story is now the subject of a University of Florida project funded by a $14,000 Forrest E. Mars Jr. Chocolate History Grant awarded in February. The research will form the basis of an interactive, chocolate-centered exhibit at the Governor’s House Cultural Center and Museum.
The exhibit is scheduled to open to the public in early December, offering visitors another sweet reason to explore St. Augustine’s past.