Sorry, the page you tried to view could not be found. It is possible this page was moved or deleted. Please refer to the main site navigation to find what you were looking for, or contact us for further assistance. Truffles are sinfully good with wide variety, made fresh in store. Selection of craft beers is impressive and geographically diverse. Can buy single can or bottle. Excellent, lesser known, and modestly priced wines. Proprietors Patti and Steph are knowledgable and they and the entire staff are friendly and helpful. On Saturdays ther are free truffle, wine and beer tastings. Fun and delicious - the orange chocolate fudge is amazing. Candy, Wine and beer tastings along with excellent choices. Definitely recommend stopping in. Combination of hand made custom chocolates, wine and beers. The chocolates are a bit pricey at $2 each but the uniqueness of the product and the fact that they are hand made by the owner makes them worth the price. Great for gifts, parties, or just the sweet tooth in the family.

These are truly works of art. The wine is great, chocolates are beautiful and delicious, and the owner (I think) was amazing, knowledgeable, and super helpful. Go, taste, visit, and buy. You won't regret it. We actually went 2 days in a row! Chocolate was good but very pricey for the size. They advertise tastings but it's not a place to sit and have wine. They give you a small sample of whatever the special is but it is more like a liquor store Thank you Karen for coming in. We are a retail store for wine, craft beer and chocolates. I am sorry you were disappointed in not being able to sit down and relax. We are looking into having some tables outside so you can come relax and enjoy some wine, craft beer or artisanal chocolates. We offer the wine tastings at... This little store has it put together. The chocolate is hand made on site. New flavors all the time. Very nice wine & craft beer selection and if your not sure what to get Patti is wonderful with helping you get one you will enjoy.

The gift baskets are made special to your order. Must see in Punta Gorda!!! Great people who are giving an opportunity for Punta Gorda to taste some very exclusive wines. Then to really top it off, there are custom designed chocolates made right on the premises. best wine to pair with ribsEnjoy the company of the customers and the owners with new arrivals of wine, beers and chocolates coming in at your next visit.red wine gift selection I was delighted to see a new chocolate and wine shop open up in my neck of the woods. best wine country vineyardsThe shop is beautiful, and more importantly the chocolates are to die for. best wine made in 2007

Yes, they are better than Norman Love. I tried a few different types of fudge and each one was delectable. I also bought some molded chocolates. Thank you, Oliver, for your gracious review. We are delighted that you enjoyed our hospitality and our extensive selection of gourmet delights. best wines of new zealand 2015We will strive to serve you and this community as Punta Gorda's #1 Choice for Chocolate, Wine & Craft Beer for many, many years to come! best wine tasting toursWelcome Oliver... to the Punta Gorda Chocolate & Wine family!!! Wine Lover's - 72% Dark Pairs with Zinfandel - 3oz Tin ( 0 Reviews ) Dark Chocolate & Red Wine Sixth in our Wine Lover's Chocolate Collection, the 72% cocoa blend of these dark chocolate drops perfectly complements the rich, powerful quality of many Zinfandel wines. Zinfandel wines are one of the few red wines that are generally best enjoyed young, within three to five years of the vintage.

Coincidentally (or maybe not), our 72% Wine Lover's Chocolates are also best enjoyed young, within a year of purchase! Minimum Order Qty : 8 tins Be the first to review this product. Subscribe to our newsletter!Patients have been known to hug Lauren Gerson, MD, so overjoyed are they at hearing her words. What does she say to them? Go ahead and eat chocolate. Indulge your passion for spicy cuisine. Enjoy coffee when you want it, have that orange juice with breakfast and, what the heck, eat a grapefruit, too. Gerson says that for most heartburn patients, there's insufficient evidence to support the notion that eating these foods will make heartburn worse or that cutting them out will make it go away. Many of Gerson's patients walk into her clinic upset, having been advised elsewhere to severely limit their diets to help reduce their heartburn symptoms. But recent research by Gerson, assistant professor of medicine, indicates there's no evidence to support a need for dietary deprivation, except for the unlucky few whose heartburn is clearly triggered by a particular food.

Gerson's advice runs counter to the long-standing recommendations of virtually every professional organization of gastroenterologists, including the American College of Gastroenterology, as well as the National Institutes of Health. For the past 15-20 years, the standard treatment for heartburn has been to cut out the aforementioned culinary joys—along with fried and fatty foods, all alcoholic and carbonated beverages, tobacco and mint—and to stop eating three hours before lying down. In addition, you're advised to keep your weight under control. Those lifestyle changes coupled with antacids and various over-the-counter and prescription medications have been the accepted first line of treatment. But Gerson, a practicing gastroenterologist for seven years and director of Stanford's Esophageal and Small Bowel Disorder Center, said the stream of "very unhappy" patients referred to her clinic by outside doctors caused her to doubt the efficacy of the usual treatment advice. "The patients were on very bland diets and cutting out coffee and wine and everything that they enjoy—and basically their heartburn wasn't getting any better," she said.

"So I decided that maybe it's time to look and see if these lifestyle measures really work." In the May 8 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, Gerson and two other physicians at the School of Medicine—Tonya Kaltenbach, MD, and Seth Crockett, MD—published the results of a systematic survey they conducted of more than 2,000 studies published worldwide on heartburn, also known as acid reflux or GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease), between 1975 and 2004. They found 100 studies looking at lifestyle factors thought to be associated with heartburn. Only 16 of those studies examined how implementing lifestyle changes affect heartburn symptoms, and these studies were the focus of their article. Their conclusion: There is currently no evidence to show that any of the dietary restrictions usually recommended make a difference. They found only two lifestyle changes for which there was evidence of a clear benefit from making a change. First, if you're overweight, then losing some pounds will reduce or even eliminate the amount of heartburn you suffer.

Second, raising the head of your bed will cut down on the amount of stomach acid that can enter your esophagus while you sleep. But Gerson noted a conundrum in her counsel. Although there is no evidence that ceasing consumption of the suspect foods will reduce heartburn, some of the studies did show that certain of the foods (such as chocolate and carbonated beverages) can reduce the pressure exerted by the esophageal sphincter, the control valve that keeps the food you've swallowed and your digestive acids down in your stomach, where they belong. Heartburn is most commonly caused when the esophageal sphincter relaxes more often than it is supposed to, allowing stomach acid to flow up into the esophagus. That causes a burning sensation behind the breastbone or acidic fluid surging up into the mouth. So it might seem logical to think that if a particular food has been shown to cause a loosening of the sphincter, then eliminating that food from your diet would allow the sphincter to tighten up, thus reducing your heartburn.

But, no, said Gerson, that doesn't necessarily seem to be the case, because simply eliminating a certain food doesn't fix the main problem of the esophageal sphincter relaxing too readily. Gerson's experiences with her patients back that up. "It's very rare to see a patient who says, 'Oh, I just changed my diet and everything got better,'" she said, "though this might be the case for patients with milder heartburn symptoms who never walk into the doctor's office for advice." The cause of the conundrum lies in the nature of the studies that have been done. They generally looked at whether a particular food decreased the pressure exerted by the sphincter or increased the acidity in the stomach, but not at whether taking that food out of a patient's diet made any difference. For example, Gerson said, "There were 14 studies that examined the effect of coffee on sphincter pressure and acidity in the esophagus, and none of them demonstrated a change after coffee consumption.

To date, no one has done a study where they took patients and told them to cut coffee out for several days to see if their sphincter pressures or acid profiles markedly improved." Gerson and her co-authors said that to really sort out how effective, or ineffective, dietary and lifestyle changes are in combating GERD, future research has to be designed to specifically look at the effects of implementing those measures. Most physicians treating a heartburn sufferer will generally put them on a medication, in addition to any lifestyle changes they recommend. These days that's usually a proton pump inhibitor, which reduces the amount of acid secreted in the stomach. Gerson said that for the most part, medication alone is adequate to treat the symptoms of heartburn. "The main reason they probably have heartburn is that their sphincter muscle is relaxing too much and taking the medicine will decrease the amount of acid that's going into their esophagus," she said. "Since I don't have a lot of evidence that changing their diet dramatically is going to take the heartburn away, it makes more sense just to take the medicine," she added.