A Big Voice in a Small Room: Meet Yvette Holder

Wine & Chocolate at Trugalug — Saturday, September 19

If you know the story behind our name, you know we're partial to small things with big voices. A Trugalug is a tiny creature who rides around on a bee and protects the forest by sounding much larger than he is. That's every bonbon we make — a little bite that says a great deal.

Wine works the same way. A small pour, taken after the right piece of chocolate, can change what you thought you knew about both of them. That's what we're doing on September 19, and we're not doing it alone.

Meet Yvette Holder

Yvette is a Certified Wine Specialist and holds her WSET Level 2 Award in Wines — and if that string of letters makes the evening sound stiff, let us correct that right now.

She came to wine by way of theatre, community engagement, and hospitality, and all three show. She hosts tastings on one stubborn principle: wine should not be intimidating. Not the pronunciation, not the label, not the swirling. She can take a room of people who are quietly nervous about saying the wrong thing and get them saying what they actually taste — which, it turns out, is usually right.

Plenty of people know a great deal about wine. Far fewer can hand what they know to a stranger in a way that makes the stranger feel smarter instead of smaller. That's why we asked her.

What the forty-five minutes look like

Small, on purpose. Six seats, set up in a corner of the shop while the store is open — you'll hear the grinder running and people coming in for bars. It's a tasting in a working chocolate shop, not a lecture hall.

You'll taste a set of wines paired to our chocolate, bean-to-bar and bonbons, with Yvette walking you through what's in the glass and me walking you through what's on the plate. We'll talk about why some pairings sing and others fight. There's no wrong answer, and nobody is going to make you spit anything into a bucket.

Forty-five minutes — long enough to learn something that sticks, short enough that you can go on to dinner afterward and be insufferable about tannins.

The details

Wine & Chocolate Tasting Saturday, September 19, 2026 5:00 – 5:45 PM Trugalug Chocolates, 2116 C New Bern Ave, Raleigh Six seats — $65 per seat · 21+

Reserve online or call us at 919.238.9111. When the six seats are gone, they're gone — but tell us if you miss out, because how fast this one fills will decide how often we run it.

We built this shop on the idea that a small thing, made with care and explained by someone who loves it, is a big experience. That's a bar of chocolate. It's also a glass of wine.

Little bites. Little sips. Big tastes.

Trugalug Chocolates is open Thursday through Sunday, 12:00 to 8:30 — 2116 C New Bern Ave, Raleigh, NC 27610.