Harbor Sweets has been making their specialty chocolates in Salem for 40 years. It’s always worth stopping by for a factory tour (complete with samples). While there are conveyor belts and moderate automation, most of the work in preparing these goodies is done by hand by a large team. For decades, they’ve made a handful of pieces, to perfection.

This year, in honor of their 40th anniversary, Harbor Sweets has introduced a new line. Salt & Ayre features their first new confections in a dozen years, with four truffles and three sea-salt-bedecked bonbons.

“We’ve been asked to create a truffle line,” owner and CEO Phyllis LeBlanc says—by both retailers and customers. But it took a few years. LeBlanc brought in chef and cookbook author Lora Brody (her books include Growing Up on the Chocolate Diet) to consult, and the results are four incredible chocolate truffles: Chai, in a white chocolate shell dusted with cinnamon (my favorite); two coffee variations, Cafe au Lait and Espresso; and that classic flavor combo, Hazelnut.

Three dark chocolate pieces are salted: a toffee is topped with chipotle sea salt, a caramel with Himalayan sea salt, and a chunk of crystallized ginger with Thai ginger sea salt. They’re riding the perfect wave of salt and sweet.

Harbor Sweets
Palmer Cove, 85 Leavitt Street, Salem, MA
978-745-7648