Across Indiana
Sweet Home Indiana
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Donaldson’s Finer Chocolates in Lebanon, Indiana is just as magical as Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.
Did you know June is National Candy Month? Take a trip back to 1995 with Across Indiana producer J. Robert Cook to Donaldson’s Finer Chocolates in Lebanon, Indiana—where the melt-in-your-mouth magic of chocolate is celebrated year-round.
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Across Indiana is a local public television program presented by WFYI
Across Indiana
Sweet Home Indiana
Clip | 4m 57sVideo has Closed Captions
Did you know June is National Candy Month? Take a trip back to 1995 with Across Indiana producer J. Robert Cook to Donaldson’s Finer Chocolates in Lebanon, Indiana—where the melt-in-your-mouth magic of chocolate is celebrated year-round.
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship(gentle music) ♪ There is no life I know ♪ ♪ To compare with pure imagination ♪ ♪ Living there, you'll be free ♪ - [Reporter] Willy Wonka's chocolate factory may have been a Hollywood illusion, but just up the road a ways from Indianapolis along I-65 on the south side of Lebanon is a real chocolate factory with a reputation of excellence that Mr. Wonka would admire himself.
Donaldson's Finer chocolates have been an Indiana institution since 1966 when George started the business with his wife.
Since then, it has grown into a Hoosier tradition known worldwide.
- I was talking to a fellow Rotarian.
I belonged to the Lebanon Rotary Club, and I was somehow talking about I'd like to get in my own business, and he said, "You ought to go out and talk to my brother-in-law who has this chocolate shop."
He said, "He wants to get out."
And so I talked it over with my wife, and she thought I was crazy, but we did go out and talk to him, and over a period of some conversations, why, we eventually did buy him out.
Our main line is assorted flavors of buttercreams.
We have vanilla center, chocolate flavor, maple, rum butter, (machine clattering) and we have three fruit flavors of raspberry, lemon, and orange.
We make all kinds of nut pieces, clusters and chocolate barks, which has, like, little bars.
It has nut pieces in it and crunchy pieces in it.
We had a toffee that I never was satisfied with, and I worked over three years, three summers in the summertime when I do my experimenting before I ever got that down the way I liked it, and I finally got it, I thought was right, and my wife said, "This is it.
You've got it.
Now don't change it anymore."
And it's gone over real well.
(bright music) - [Reporter] That sense of personal touch and family pride in his confections may be what sets George's chocolates apart from the large industrial candy makers.
Here, nearly everything is done by hand, from the filling of heart-shaped molds for a corporate customer to the hand-packing of a gift box.
And it's that attention to detail that has led to a reputation for quality that reaches far beyond Indiana.
- We've shipped to the Orient, and we've shipped over to Europe.
We can't ship where it's in the southern part of the hemispheres because of the heat, but we're known not only just in Lebanon, Indiana.
We've gotten to be pretty much internationally known because of how much shipping we do.
Still, we just get people who walk in and buy.
I happened to be here late one night this past Christmas, and a lady drove up and knocked on the door, and I said, "Yeah, I'll take care of ya."
Before she got outta here, she bought $700 worth of chocolates.
We had five-pounders stuck over there.
She got four or five of those and a bunch of threes and twos.
And that's the type of business that people do at Christmas time especially.
They just walk in and buy several boxes, and that's the meat of our business.
(gentle piano music) - [Reporter] So what makes chocolate so appealing to nearly the entire populace that anyone would spend so much on it, even as a gift?
What is the secret within this almost mystical substance - Coco bean, cocoa butter, the taste bud on your tongue is just something that no other confectionery has.
(tool thudding) And another thing is that, you know, the melting point of chocolate is almost the same as your body temperature.
So when you put a piece of chocolate in your mouth, it'll just start melting immediately, and it makes such a smooth taste on your tongue and on your palates.
(machine whirring) And I think that melting point has a lot to do with it, whereas other things, it has to stay in your mouth while chewing before it actually gets to your body temperature.
But chocolate will immediately blend right in with your body temperature, and it's just good.
(George laughing) (gentle music) (machine clattering) (laid-back music) - [Presenter] For more "Across Indiana" stories, go to wfyi.org/acrossindiana.
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