Both of us are at the J. Rieger × André’s chocolate-and-bourbon pairing. Two of Kansas City’s best-known craft houses — the original KC distillery and the city’s flagship chocolatier — running matched pairs the way they should be run. The pairings done right are the kind that change what you reach for after dinner for the next month.

What is the J. Rieger × André’s pairing?

J. Rieger & Co. and André’s Confiserie Suisse are the Kansas City partnership that turned local bourbon and local chocolate into a serious pairing program. J. Rieger & Co. is Kansas City’s original distillery — founded in 1887 by Jacob Rieger, shut down by Prohibition, and revived in 2014 by Andy Rieger (Jacob’s great-great-great-grandson) with Ryan Maybee. André’s Confiserie Suisse, founded in 1955, is the city’s flagship Swiss-trained chocolatier, now run by René Bollier (grandson of founder André Bollier).

The two brands met in 2015 at the WWI Museum’s Operation Indulgence event, and the J. Rieger & Co. Collection of bourbon- and rye-infused chocolates has grown out of that pairing — including a Bourbon Ball built around Rieger’s Straight Bourbon Whiskey and a creamy caramel finished with the 2021 Bottled-in-Bond Straight Rye (the first whiskey distilled in Kansas City since Prohibition). The pairing format runs through matched chocolate-and-spirit sets in sequence — cocoa percentage, bean origin, and finishing doing the same kind of work as the wood and grain in the glass.