Honor the Farmers

May 16, 2016

A few weeks ago when I visited Raaka’s factory in Brooklyn, head chocolate maker Nate Hodge showed me this amazing book called Los Guardianes del Cacao (The Guardians of Cacao). It profiles lots of different Peruvian cacao farmers in a gorgeous, long-form way with lots of pretty pictures.

I was impressed that someone is focusing so heavily on the farmers, since they’re often ignored in this eclipsed supply chain.

Who are your favorite cacao farmers, and why?

Tell me at megan@chocolatenoise.com or on Facebook or Twitter and I’ll include your comments in the next Chocolate Today.

I Judged the International Chocolate Awards

May 14, 2016

via GIPHY

Hello, more chocolate than you could ever eat, or would ever want to eat. (And man, I never thought I’d say that!) The chocolate world is growing exponentially, if the entries in the Americas/Asia-Pacific arm of the International Chocolate Awards are any indication.

Here’s how it works. You taste a few couverture chocolates to prime your palate, take notes on what you find, get yourself a bowl of cold polenta (which they’ve found sandpapers any leftover flavors away), and start blind-tasting anonymous entries by category. Every five chocolates or so, you go back to the couverture to see if your tastes have changed (think major palate fatigue!).

I tasted everything from solid dark chocolate bars to inclusion bars to milk bars to bonbons to white chocolate. I started at 3 PM, stopped around 8 PM, and somehow, dizzily, made my way home. The craziest part: I was the biggest wimp there. Everyone else had been judging for 3 days straight. Stomachs of steel, I say. Stomachs of steel.

Stay tuned for the winners in the coming months!

Blends Are Just as Good — If Not Better — Than Single Origin

May 13, 2016

Single-origin bread. Yes, my friends, this is now a thing, and it hit my inbox (and then my stomach) a few weeks ago. The bread (from La Brea Bakery, in case you’re interested) was good but not great. But it made me wonder, Is the foodie apocalypse near? Has “single origin” turned into a mere buzzword?

After all, “single origin” simply means that the ingredients all come from one place. It doesn’t guarantee high quality, though usually if someone cares enough to source ingredients from one location, they also care about them being pretty good.

We have this idea, though, that single origin equals good and, at least in chocolate, blend equals bad. Industrialized. Anonymous. But that’s far from the case.

Blending chocolate is not a result of industrialization and in fact has its roots in pre-Mesoamerican culture. As Maricel Presilla writes in The New Taste of Chocolate, blending “was founded on a recognition that the right combinations of different cassis have a kind of synergy, a total effect greater than the sum of its parts.” She cites a recipe for chocolate from Mexico in 1873 that calls for a blend of beans from Soconusco, Maracaybo, and Caracas. “Tabasco [cacao] can also be used in place of Maracaybo,” the recipe says, “but chocolate made with it has less body.”

In other words, it’s an art.

That’s why I was so excited to see Raaka test out blends as part of their First Nibs subscription package in April. The Amazon Basin Blend combines San Martin, Pangoa, and Peru Nacional, all similar terrain. In the tasting notes, head chocolate maker Nate Hodge writes,

“The San Martin and Pangoa beans both share an acidic, fruit-forward flavor profile that is balanced out by the more subtle and creamy characteristics of the Peru Nacional and its prized white cacao beans.”

Then there’s the East African Blend. American makers don’t use African beans very often, but this one combines Eastern Congo, Uganda, and Madagascar for an earthy bar with “accentuated by flavors of dried fruit and birch.”

Neither of these is available for purchase yet, but there are a host of other small craft makers with great blends, as well as the masters like Guittard, Valrhona, and Bernachon. Then there are the hundreds of amazing chocolatiers who have perfected blends. Do they make lesser chocolate? I think not.

Agree? Disagree? Tell me what you think at megan@chocolatenoise.com or on Facebook or Twitter and I’ll include your comments in the next Chocolate Today.

What "Bean to Bar" Really Means

May 11, 2016

A few weeks ago Dove sent me a press release with an infographic of their “unique bean to bar making process.” (Think Dutching.)

Technically they’re correct. They do start with beans and make bars. The same could be said for Hershey. Of course, over the past 15 years “bean to bar” has come to mean chocolate made from scratch in small batches by artisans who buy, roast, and grind the beans themselves. But on its own, the term itself doesn’t mean much. The industry is going back and forth and forth and back about this term, with some embracing it and others letting go of it altogether. For example, French Broad recently took it off its packaging. Meanwhile expert Clay Gordon says he thinks it should be "from the bean," not "bean to bar."

What does “bean to bar” mean to YOU?

Tell me at megan@chocolatenoise.com or on Facebook or Twitter and I’ll include your comments in the next Chocolate Today.

The Most Decadent Chocolate Pairings Ever

May 9, 2016

I almost don’t even want to tell you guys what I’ve been doing over the past few weeks. Okay, okay, I’ll spill: I’ve been tasting chocolate with CHEESE and BREAD to come up with the most decadent chocolate pairings ever for my book. I know, it’s a hard life.

I’m saving the exact pairings for the book, but here, for your reading pleasure, are a few of the bizarre tastes we’ve found along the way, as well as some hilarious quotes. Thanks to Christine Clarke of Murray’s Cheese, Tess McNamara of Lucy's Whey, Joanna Brennan, and Matt Caputo and Jessica Weaver of A Priori Specialty Foods for their excellent taste buds and sense of humor.

Cheese

We used the “milkshake method” from Murray’s, offending mothers everywhere: Take a bite of chocolate, let it melt for a second in your mouth, then take a bite of cheese.

Bad tastes:

Microwave popcorn

Cheese + chocolate equals…garlic

Good tastes:

Mashed potatoes and butter

Junior mint (not with a minty chocolate, just with the cheese-chocolate combo!)

A cheese that’s “cartoonishly umami” on its own gets mellowed with chocolate

Bread

We also used the “milkshake method” here: Take a bite of bread, chew for a little bit, then add the chocolate. You’ll lose some of the nuances of the chocolate, but it’s worth it for a good pairing. A bad pairing tastes like bread and chocolate; a good pairing tastes like a third flavor altogether.

Bad tastes:

Barbecue sauce

Beef jerky

Smoked baby diaper chocolate, or, to be exact, on remembering a chocolate we didn’t taste during the experiments: “It tastes like a baby diaper that’s put in a hot smoker, smoked until it’s petrified, put in a wood chipper, then covered in chocolate.”

Good tastes:

Cake

Peanut butter and jelly

Think cheese and chocolate don’t go together? Or think this sounds like the best thing ever? What are some of your favorite pairings? Tell me at megan@chocolatenoise.com or on Facebook or Twitter and I’ll include your comments in the next Chocolate Today.

A Few More Pretty Chocolate Labels

May 6, 2016

Earlier this week I highlighted a few of my favorite labels from craft makers in the U.S. Now here are a few of YOUR favorites, from the U.S. and around the world. In other words, so much pretty chocolate! So little time!

Rózsavölgyi Csokoládé

From Hungary, recommended by Russell Robinson and Piotr Krzcluk

Map Chocolate

Recommended by Estelle Tracy, 37 Chocolates ("Keep a few next to my bed, if that tells you something 💕")

Harper Macaw

Recommended by Romi Burks, chocolate educator — Recommended by Romi Burks, chocolate educator

Pump Street Bakery

From Great Britain, recommended by Jason Warner

Rococo Chocolates

From Great Britain, recommended by Jason Warner ("Like French Broad, it opens up and reveals information in every panel, with the rest taken up by curious blue-tinted woodblock-looking prints.")

Dormouse Chocolate

From Great Britain, recommended by Jason Warner ("They've moved from plain plastic to more elaborate paper packaging but, having met them, I feel like it's not the right fit for them. I have no design instincts so I don't know what would be better. … — From Great Britain, recommended by Jason Warner ("They've moved from plain plastic to more elaborate paper packaging but, having met them, I feel like it's not the right fit for them. I have no design instincts so I don't know what would be better. I hope they nail it because they deserve success with the level of quality they're putting out.")

Chocolate Tree

From Great Britain, recommended by Jason Warner (he had a lot to say)

And the comment of the day, about pretty labels, from Andrew Baker:
"I have found that if careful I can preserve wrappers while consuming contents. Empty husks madden hungry colleagues."

Don’t You Dare Call Chocolate “Sinful”

May 4, 2016

Photo courtesy Flickr user donireewalker — *Photo courtesy* *Flickr user donireewalker*

Sinfully delicious. Wickedly rich. Obscenely decadent. I’m sick of hearing these words about dessert in general and chocolate in particular.

I know, I know, sugar will kill you and gluttony and all of that. But I think this bias goes deeper than the fact that sugar and (some types of) fat are bad for you. After all, people apply those words to a solid bar as often as they do a chocolate cake.

I’ve been rereading The True History of Chocolate as I work on my book, and I can’t help but think of this hilarious anecdote in it about the Marquis de Sade, who was a huge chocolate lover. In 1772 in Marseilles, long before he was jailed, the Marquis supposedly handed out chocolate pastilles laced with Spanish fly so that people “began to burn with unchaste ardor,” a writer noted of the incident. Naturally, a chocolate-fueled orgy followed, with some people dying “of their frightful priapic excesses.”

That story isn’t just about repressed desires of different sorts. It’s also about the general confusion around chocolate that dates back to the early days, when the Europeans first tried it and weren’t too sure what to make of it. Was it healthy or unhealthy? Food or drink? Pious or nefarious? We’re still debating many of these questions, as demonstrated by the endless parade of stories proclaiming chocolate is good for you or bad for you or will help your workout, for example.

Regardless, we clearly love the stuff. So maybe we should take a cue from the ancient Mayans and Aztecs, who weren’t confused about chocolate at all. To them it was a holy food, respected for its power but not feared, especially not for its calories.

Tell me what you know about chocolate and sin, whether it's a historical story or a personal one. Email me at megan@chocolatenoise.com or tell me on Facebook or Twitter, and I'll include your comments in the next Chocolate Today!

4 Chocolate Bars Too Pretty to Eat

April 30, 2016

Sometimes I yammer too much. So rather than write a long story about how we judge books (and chocolate bars!) by their cover, today I’m going to let the labels speak for themselves. Here are four of the prettiest craft chocolate packages in the country.

Ritual

Ritual just redesigned their packaging, and the Southwestern-inspired theme fits with the company’s Utah roots.

Dick Taylor

Dick Taylor enlisted the help of co-founder Dustin Taylor’s brother, a designer, to create a label that’s “like the 1890s, but simple.”

Dandelion

Dandelion designed its own handmade paper for their delicate wrappers.

French Broad

French Broad recently redesigned their packaging to look like a book; collect all the bars for a complete library.

Did I forget someone? Or do you think it's beside the point to talk about packaging? Tell me what you think at megan@chocolatenoise.com or on Facebook or Twitter and I'll include your comments in the next Chocolate Today!

Smoky Chocolate Mousse

April 28, 2016

I’m not a fan of smoky chocolate. This may come as a surprise to some, since I’m from Texas, land of smoked everything. But that savory taste you get in a lot of cacao from Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, and so on? Not for me.

But it can really work in recipes. The smoky undertones of the PNG brownie in Dandelion’s brownie flightblew me away when I tried it, and I haven’t quite recovered.

Recently Evan LeRoy, the pitmaster at Freedmen’s Barbecue in Austin (my favorite spot), sent me a recipe for a smoked chocolate mousse where he actually SMOKED the chocolate. Like, ON A GRILL. He kind of reverse-engineered the drying process that they use in Papua New Guinea. I thought, well, why not just use PNG chocolate in it? So without further ado, here’s the recipe:

Smoky Chocolate Mousse

8 ounces smoky chocolate (Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Java), chopped

1 C + ¾ C heavy cream, separated

4oz powdered sugar

1oz bourbon

Smoked salt, optional

1. Whip 1 C heavy cream with 4oz powdered sugar, and 1oz bourbon to stiff peaks. Simultaneously heat 3/4 C heavy cream to a low simmer.

2. Pour the warm cream in a blender and start on low. Slowly add the chopped chocolate. Add a heavy pinch smoked salt and blend covered on high for a few seconds until all combined to create a ganache.

3. Fold in the ganache to the whipped cream in three batches as to not deflate the whipped cream. Make sure everything is combined and the lumps are gone. Pour into serving vessels and chill to set. To serve, top with smoked salt.

In my upcoming book, I'm including all sorts of chocolate-forward recipes like this, where you can actually taste the flavor notes of the chocolate. I can't wait to share them with you!

Do you have a special recipe that you make with craft chocolate? Tell me all about it! Write me at megan@chocolatenoise.com or on Facebook or Twitter and I'll include your comments in the next Chocolate Today!

I Threw Away Chocolate, and I'm Not Ashamed

April 27, 2016

Last weekend I sent out what I thought was an innocent little tweet:

Boyfriend just laid down the law and made me prioritize and toss chocolate stash. What would you keep, and what would you throw away???
— Megan Giller (@MeganGiller) April 23, 2016

Oh, it’s the middle of the day on a Saturday, I thought. No one will pay attention.

But it got a BIG response, including its own hashtag, #keepthestash:

@MeganGiller I'd keep the chocolate and throw away the boyfriend. He should be supportive of your projects.
— Chocophile George (@chocophilenyc) April 23, 2016

@MeganGiller Rogue stays, Corallo goes?
— Joe Fox (@SilverSpringJoe) April 23, 2016

@MeganGiller the boyfriend
— andrea grimes (@andreagrimes) April 23, 2016

@MeganGiller If it's only bloomed, it can be melted into milk for delicious hot chocolate.
— Chocophile George (@chocophilenyc) April 23, 2016

@MeganGiller You can chop it up for chocolate chip cookies or brownies, too.
— Chocophile George (@chocophilenyc) April 23, 2016

@MeganGiller eat what you can now, get rid of anything gross, rationalize keeping the rest by organizing and categorizing :)
— Alan P Woods (@ATroubleU) April 23, 2016

@MeganGiller throw away the boyfriend
— Maverick Chocolate (@MaverickChoco) April 23, 2016

Blasphemy! @MeganGiller don't waste it!!! Make hot fudge or fondue!!!
— With Love from BK (@withlovefrombk) April 23, 2016

Best tweet we've seen all day! #KeepTheStash @MeganGiller! https://t.co/DwsPsoKam1
— Bean Bar You (@BeanBarYou) April 24, 2016

@MeganGiller @chocophilenyc sounds like a hot chocolate party is in order.
— Dan Rattigan (@RattiganDan) April 24, 2016

Now, my first reaction was to

Clarify that it was really my doing and that I don't know why I brought my boyfriend into it
Get defensive and tell everyone that I was tossing Green & Blacks and Scharffen Berger that had been sitting in my cabinet for three years, as well as some samples from new makers that, well, weren’t so enjoyable. I’d been hoarding it for all this time, planning to make cookies, drinking chocolate, and so on, but there are only so many calories in a day. Then there were about 10 packages with one or two squares left in them, which I’ve kept to taste and retaste. I’m almost afraid to finish a bar, especially a really, really good one. Tiny morsels of Soma, Rogue, and Patric fill my cabinets. On Saturday I bit the bullet — well, actually the chocolate bar — and polished them off.

I then had to clear out a massive drawer in my closet to stash all of the chocolate, since it had taken over the kitchen and part of the office and needed to be relocated. (I won’t even get into how many empty packages I have laying around, a collection that I plan to keep forever to remind myself what bars I’ve tried and also the ridiculous volume of chocolate that I’ve eaten over the years.) The stuff I couldn’t keep was repurposed, mostly given to some very lucky neighbors.

This exercise as well as the reaction on Twitter made me realize how much food waste is not part of the conversation — and how much it should be. When I reviewed restaurants for places like Texas Monthly and Zagat Austin, I would wince every time chefs sent out 10 dishes for just a friend and me, knowing we couldn’t finish everything. Sure, it’s a fabulous lifestyle, but it’s also super wasteful. The entire food industry perpetuates this status quo, and it can be shocking to people who aren’t part of that world.

In the case of those chocolate bars, farmers took a lot of care with those beans. They were then shipped across the world to be treated lovingly by a craft maker, who then sent them to a store or to me directly. That’s a lot of time, energy, manpower, and carbon footprint to simply throw away. But chocolate makers as well as people in the industry and even good old chocolate-obsessed folks do it all the time. Is it part of the process, or a waste? What do you do with your leftover chocolate?

Write me at megan@chocolatenoise.com or on Facebook or Twitter and I’ll include your comments in the next Chocolate Today.

You Should Pay $100 for This Chocolate

April 25, 2016

A few weeks ago I sat waiting at a café for the self-proclaimed “most hated man in chocolate,” Mark Christian of C-Spot. The slim, red-haired guy who appeared from the Upper West Side on his bike took me by surprise, launching into conversation about “cocoa doodle gurus” (i.e., experts) and “a bucking bronco of a chocolate” (i.e., a particularly flavorful bar).

He slipped me some cacao beans out of what I think was a cigarette case. “Guess the origin,” he said excitedly. They were amazing: Dark, decadent, roasty. I had no idea what they were. “Now try this chocolate,” he said, cradling the label so I couldn’t see where it came from. Equally delicious, smooth and creamy. Turned out the beans were from Cuba, and A. Morin used those same beans to make the chocolate I tried.

Mark kept showering me with goodies, always accompanied by the (frankly intimidating) guessing game. Far and away, I was most impressed with the Heirloom Chocolate Series, a box of seven half-ounce bars made with heirloom cacao.

What’s heirloom cacao? Well, there used to be many, many varieties of cacao in the world. Some have disappeared naturally while others are being replaced with higher-yielding varieties like the dreaded man-made CCN-51 (which supposedly tastes like sh*t). That’s why some people in the industry got together to form the Heirloom Cacao Preservation Fund, which hopes to encourage farmers to continue to grow quality cacao by designating strands of it as “heirloom,” which go for much higher prices.

So far seven strands have been officially designated “heirloom.” Mark enlisted chocolate makers Fruition, Zokoko, Millcreek Cacao Roasters, Manoa, Mindo, and Brasstown to make bars with each variety. The cacao is from Ecuador, Bolivia, Hawaii, Costa Rica, and Belize. Mark’s palate is impeccable, and I love how his quirkiness shines through in the tasting notes, with descriptions like “cocoa nuts ‘n honey,” “cookie dough,” “chocolate hash,” and “volcanic coral.”

I’ve been talking a lot about the right price for a bar of chocolate lately, from $10 to $325. This box combines the best cacao in the world with the most talented makers in the world, curated by one of the most esteemed chocolate experts in the world, without any bullshit or marketing. $100? Seems like a steal to me.

Agree? Disagree? Write me at megan@chocolatenoise.com or on Facebook or Twitter and I'll include your comments in the next Chocolate Today!

Notes From the Underground Chocolate Salon

April 20, 2016

Ten chocolate bars. Seven people. And a lot of conversation. Last week's Underground Chocolate Salon was great fun, and I want to tell you about it.

I’ve always been jealous of Paris in the 1920s, when artistic and literary luminaries gathered at Gertrude Stein’s house to talk and hang out: Picasso, Cézanne, Joyce, Eliot, Cocteau. Only one thing would have made it better: chocolate. That’s why I started what I’m calling the Underground Chocolate Salon, for like-minded (or not so like-minded) people to get together and talk chocolate, as well as enjoy one another’s company.

If you want a spot at the next one, in New York on MAY 25 from 6:30 to 8 PM, email me immediately at megan@chocolatenoise.com to let me know and I’ll send you the details and location.

In the meantime here are some notes from last week’s salon.

This time everyone brought a bar or two that they liked or that they wanted to try, so we had a huge variety. One person noted that after reading my thoughts about Askinosie's new whiskey bar, she bought a few as gifts. When she shared them with friends, a few people disliked it so much they spit it out! I'm curious if they were surprised by the unique tastes in the chocolate because they had never tried bean-to-bar chocolate or if it was the whiskey taste itself that bothered them (she wasn't sure). It's true that trying chocolate with strong flavor notes can surprise and overwhelm people at first — in both good and bad ways.

Anyway, on to the tastings.

Michel Cluizel 66% Mexico

Smells smoky and earthy, tastes of red fruit and raisins. Includes vanilla, which intensifies/throws everything off.

French Broad 68% Nicaragua

"Smells like Taza," something stone and mineral. Tastes nutty, very dark roast, more bitter. Licorice. Acidity in front.

Woodblock 70% Peru

Tastes acidic and of red fruit. Coarser texture, fudgy, thick bar. Not a lasting bar, has a short finish. A bit astringent.

Durci 70% Rio Caribe, Venezuela

Smells of herbs and licorice. Tastes sweet and of herbs and licorice, maybe horseradish. Nice texture, snappier, definitely a lot of added cocoa butter in this one. Too buttery for some people, flat. No astringent aftertaste.

Dandelion 70% Mantuano, Venezuela

Tastes round and complete. Lots of chocolate tastes, an end note of fruit, specifically dried cherries and spice. Bit of astringency at the end.

Pump Street 72% Madagascar

Tastes flat initially but huge burst of red fruit as it finishes.

Askinosie 72% Tanzania

Tastes earthy, a little acidic, dried fruit like raisins. High cocoa butter content, a dairy taste and something like molasses or burned sugar (in a good way). Might have to do with the type of sugar they use.

Marou 76% Ba Ria Vietnam

Smells like chocolate chocolate chocolate. Tastes strong even though it's still relatively low cocoa percentage. Coffee, toasted nuts, meaty.

Bisou 76% Honduras, "American Style"

Smells like licorice, smoke, cleaning products, ammonia, moldy. Tastes like cough medicine, very astringent. Bad aftertaste. Possibly made using underfermented beans?

Several people disliked this chocolate so much that they asked me why Bisou would sell something that was so clearly not up to snuff. That's a complicated question. On the one hand, people are still figuring out how to make good chocolate, and companies need to recoup costs of expensive beans and the time and energy it took to make the chocolate. On the other hand, should we pay for people's experiments? I don't want to throw Bisou under the bus, but at the same time, it's important to be honest about what's happening in the industry, and what we're tasting.

Pump Street 85% Ecuador

Smells yeasty and tastes mild, not very chocolatey. Not floral like most Ecuadorian cacao but still hay, grassy, vegetal, raw nuts. "Empty" for an 85%, lots of added cocoa butter.

This salon raised lots of questions. Have thoughts about them? Write me at megan@chocolatenoise.com or on Facebook or Twitter and I'll include your comments in the next Chocolate Today.

Judge a Book By Its Cover

April 19, 2016

French Broad's new packaging is exactly what this industry needs

Let’s get real: We are a judgmental bunch. Very few people stand in the chocolate aisle (or wine or beer or, yes, books) and read the fine print. Instead we look at the cover as a shorthand to convey quality, time, care. It’s not the end-all, be-all, but it helps the hard sell.

Take French Broad, which has just MAJORLY redesigned their packaging. Up until now, their chocolate has been camouflaged behind some plain-looking wrappers.

Brown. The shape of a cacao pod. Cursive. Not much to distinguish it on the shelf. Now take a look at how they've transformed their image:

GORGEOUS, right? It immediately speaks to the customer. Beyond saying, "You need to eat me NOW," it also communicates French Broad's strong sense that storytelling is central to their company and their mission. (Read more about French Broad in the full profile, here.)

Each bar can stand on its own, but together they make a unique library of chocolate. Inside every one you’ll find:

Chapter 1. The story of Dan and Jael Rattigan, the couple behind the cacao

Chapter 2. The story of that particular bar (for example, “From the Waters of Bulls Bay” to describe the sea salt bar and their collaboration with local company Bulls Bay Saltworks)

Chapter 3. Notes on Taste

Chapter 4. The story of the (recyclable) box and packaging

Afterword. The story of the entire company

Oh, and a delicious bar of chocolate.

As an interesting side note, French Broad decided not to use the term “bean to bar” but to describe their chocolate as “handcrafted.”

Over the past year or so many makers have redesigned their packaging (Ritual’s in particular is pretty cool). In my opinion Dan and Jael have stepped the game up several notches. Then again, I’m a book lover.

Which makers' labels are your favorite? Write me at megan@chocolatenoise.com or on Facebook or Twitterand I’ll include your comments in the next Chocolate Today!

John Scharffenberger’s Advice to Bean-to-Bar Makers

April 15, 2016

John Scharffenberger thinks that bean-to-bar makers are doing it wrong. I chatted with him recently for my upcoming book about American bean-to-bar chocolate, and most of our discussion was about the mistakes that the industry is currently making.

If you haven’t heard of John and his company Scharffen Berger, well, let’s just say they started the bean-to-bar movement in the United States. John and his partner, Robert Steinberg, actually coined the term “bean to bar” and inspired a generation with their high-quality chocolate: Dandelion, Fresco, Rogue, and more have all mentioned the company’s influence to me. Scharffen Berger sold to the Hershey Company in 2005 for about $50 million, and now you can find their bars and products in mainstream grocery stores across the country.

John is still pretty excited about the exploding bean-to-bar movement here and abroad, and he told me that he loves Marou, Dandelion, Guittard, Valrhona, and Dick Taylor, among other brands. However, he also has a lot of advice. Here are some of his thoughts.

1. The prices are too high.

“If you’re trying to make something for the 99 percent and your pricing is for the 1 percent, there’s a disconnect. You don’t sell your first Tesla for $100 million. People aren’t eating as much chocolate as they would be if it was better priced. By making it so exclusive by having all these constraints, you end up excluding people.”

2. Scale is a problem.

“A lot of people’s ideas of their scale is not going to work. They’re going to be bumbling along forever. Scharffen Berger hasn’t gotten any bigger than it used to be, but nobody has gotten bigger than Scharffen Berger. That’s kind of weird.

“Brands like Marou are going to do really well. They’re not planning on having this itsy-bitsy little company. They just want to make really good chocolate. They don’t make it an intellectual exercise.”

3. A big company can make good chocolate.

“I think the quality of Scharffen Berger now is pretty good. Two of the bean-to-bars that were made after we sold have been better than anything we made: a single origin from Brazil and a single origin from Vietnam.”

4. Makers should target the home baking crowd.

“Forty-five percent of our products were used by home bakers. They were not candy bars. It’s a big mistake [to focus on solid bars]. Candy bars are 20 percent of our market per sales, which is not very much. The consumer is crazy about good baking products.”

5. Only make a single-origin bar with really special cacao.

“You have some of these guys who are buying several tons of beans and bringing it here and selling by the bag, and everybody has that origin. [But even] Chuao is terrible every few years; it’s mediocre two to five years, and it’s great one of the five years or so.

“Single-origin bars definitely have a role. They put a focus on geography and on the abilities of growers to produce things that are of high quality and also to make more money. From that standpoint, it’s great. But if you’re trying to actually deliver a product that is consistent you want to make it standard.”

6. Blends can be amazing.

“In our 62 percent, we usually have 7 components. And in our 70 percent, we had sometimes 10 flavor components. We put things together to come up with as many flavors we could possibly pack into a bar. That’s how you do it."

6. Ethics should guide your business.

“Everybody works with these wonderful people in third-world countries, and the trick is this: Are they getting any money for what you’re paying them? You can’t rely on mechanisms like fair trade to do it. You have to make sure it works. Robert and I were both hippies of the sixties. We paid living wages to everybody, and we gave everybody health care. We believed that that’s the way to run a business. And you don’t make those ethical decisions like pertaining to marketing.”

7. Making money in this business isn’t easy.

“What happened when we sold? There was a huge amount of press, especially about that whole amount of money we got. My take is that a lot of these people [who are now making chocolate] said, “Oh! Look at this!” They were thinking that this is a business that one day they could do and retire. And maybe bought [into it]. I think that played a role in people’s trajectories into the [chocolate-making] business."

Do you agree with his statements? Disagree? Write me at megan@chocolatenoise.com or tell me on Facebook or Twitter and I’ll publish your thoughts in the next Chocolate Today.

Is $325 Chocolate Bullshit?

April 13, 2016

In 2014 a brand-new maker called To’ak took the world by surprise with a $260 bar of chocolate. Now they’ve upped the ante, with a $345 bar that has been aged for 18 months in a Cognac cask (it comes in the same expensive-looking wooden box with gold lettering and handmade tweezers as the first bar). Most makers are having trouble convincing the crowd that they should pay $10 for a bar of chocolate. So is a $325 bar helping or hurting the bean-to-bar cause? And at the end of the day, is the chocolate worth it, or is it simply marketing and hype, otherwise known as (necessary) bullshit?

Pros

When I tried the $260 bar last year with co-founder Jerry Toth, I was pleasantly surprised:

“The chocolate itself is great, single-origin Nacionale cacao from Ecuador that Jerry and his team have clearly taken a lot of time to cultivate. He described the aroma as ‘a flowerpot in the face,’ which I thought was pretty accurate.”

— Chocolate Noise, Facebook, Nov. 9, 2015

I haven’t tried the $345 bar, but something tells me it’s equally interesting. I believe that a crazy-high price like this is ultimately good for the industry, as it forces people to challenge their assumptions that chocolate is a cheap thrill without much depth or nuance to the flavor.

Here’s what Lauren Adler, the owner of Seattle specialty store Chocolopolis, had to say:

“The media attention they receive from their $345 bar of chocolate will be a good thing for the craft chocolate industry in the long term. Why? It forces consumers to think about chocolate in the same way they think about wine, cognac or other expensive liquors. Consumers aren’t used to paying the true economic cost of their chocolate. Suddenly, a craft chocolate bar that costs $14.00 seems like a good buy. ”

— Lauren Adler, Chocolopolis

Meanwhile Jessica Ferraro of Bar Cacao said in some ways she sees it as a positive because "it's been way easier to work with a $12 bar and a $20 bar since To'ak's release." She also mentioned how transparent Jerry is about the company’s process and goals, which has been my experience as well.

Cons

Yet at the end of the day, Jessica said she believes To’ak is more problematic than progressive, because it’s too easy to poke holes in what the company is doing. Through conversations with Jerry, she learned that the $260 bar was the company’s first attempt at making chocolate, and that the $325 bar is their first and only attempt at aging chocolate (in a Cognac barrel or Elm barrel, depending on which bar you buy). In fact, the aged chocolate is repurposed from the first time they made chocolate: Reject bars were remelted into one-gram-size coins and dropped into the barrels.

“It’s problematic to make your first batch of chocolate, put it out there to the world and suggest that it’s worth this much money because that is what it costs to produce.

A bar this expensive should be made by someone with expertise and experience. They are gaming it. They hired two people to help them. They did go to the rainforest of Ecuador and uncover some good cacao and are working to save it, but they’re being very provocative.”

— Jessica Ferraro, Bar Cacao

The bigger problem to me, though, is that there's no concrete evidence that aging chocolate makes it any better (to some degree, all chocolate is aged, since it takes time to get it from the factory to your mouth). To'ak even quotes Mark Christian from the C-Spot in their own pamphlet on this issue:

“Theoretical and anecdotal evidence suggest that allowing a bar to mature under climate-controlled settings softens flavor tags and rounds off the sharp spikes and edges, mellowing the overall profile. What else the aging process might do — whether bringing greater concentration or added hues to the flavor graph — currently remains speculative for aging chocolate.”

— Mark Christian, C-Spot

To’ak is getting press from places like Vice’s Munchies, which highlights the high price they pay their farmers and their profit-sharing program. That’s great, as it sheds light on direct trade and bean to bar. However, they’re hardly the only makers to do this. Taza, Askinosie, Dandelion, Patric, French Broad — the list of makers paying high prices, trading directly, and caring intensely about farmers and the quality of cacao goes on and on. In fact, it’s a hallmark of this new movement, not something unique to To’ak. And you can buy those bars for about $8.50. So what makes this one worth $325?

Lauren wondered that as well:

“I’m looking at the money To’ak spent on packaging, website development, marketing, a 116-page booklet, an engraved wood box and a very old Cognac barrel, and I can see the costs adding up quickly. The small batch of only 100 bars produced has some expensive marketing behind it.”

— Lauren Adler, Chocolopolis

Meanwhile Clay Gordon of TheChocolateLife.com said, "I'm not convinced that the bars would sell without the gimmicks — the box, the tweezers, etc." Instead he recommended the seven-bar Heirloom Cacao Project sampler from the C-Spot, which is priced at a comparably low $100.

So after all this discussion, should you pay for someone’s experiment? Or, if the chocolate is great, does it matter? What’s the highest price that makers should charge for a bar of chocolate, regardless of how much work went into it?

Sure, To’ak raises plenty of questions. But in my mind it’s not a cut-and-dried good or bad thing, because they’re questions we need to be asking.

Agree? Disagree? Tell me what you think at megan@chocolatenoise.com or on Facebook or Twitter and I'll include your comments in the next Chocolate Today!

And the Most Ridiculous Chocolate of the Week Is…

April 11, 2016

Brix Chocolate for Wine. When I saw this a while back at the Fancy Food Show, I was amazed that it was literally a brick. Of chocolate. Meant for wine.

I’m not really a drinker, but my chocolate expert and sommelier friends tell me that chocolate is notoriously hard to pair with wine, and that old dark chocolate with big red idea is, well, frankly, bullshit. The tannins fight with one another and block the flavors of both the chocolate and the wine.

Brix, though, subscribes to the old idea. But way, way more upsetting is that the brick of chocolate is literally just some bad Forastero chocolate from Ghana “mixed with the highest quality confectionary chocolate,” whatever that means. In other words, this stuff is absolutely not guaranteed ethical in any way: not direct trade, not even fair trade.

I’m sick of crappy products like this tricking consumers into paying for and confusing the world of chocolate even further.

Agree? Disagree? Or have your own ridiculous chocolate to share? Email me at megan@chocolatenoise.com or tell me on Facebook or Twitterand I’ll include your comments in the next Chocolate Today.

What I'm Tasting Today

Dandelion Chocolate' Kokoa Kamili Tanzania Bar

Askinosie's New Microbatch Line Is Bean to BAM!

April 6, 2016

I always knew Shawn Askinosie was some sort of chocolate priest, so it comes as no surprise that he is literally a monk: He’s a family brother at a Trappist Cistercian monastery in the Ozarks.

That Trappist history of making artisan food (ok, beer and cheese in the past, but add chocolate to the list) inspired Askinosie Chocolate to launch its new microbatch line of only 1,098 bars. Why? Because the Cistertian Order was founded in 1098, duh.

I tried the first one this week, a 77% Whiskey Dark Chocolate Bar that blew my mind with its sweet, complex flavor and strong notes of whiskey. Askinosie took Tanzanian cocoa nibs and aged them in an oak whiskey barrel for 2 years, then ground the nibs for a week in their antique melangeur before adding sugar and cocoa butter.

The time, effort, and intensity shows. Other makers have turned out excellent barrel-aged bars (Fruition’s barrel-aged bourbon dark milk comes to mind), but the liquor is usually a more subtle afternote. Here it’s front and center, though transformed into something all its own.

I’m also crazy impressed with the beautiful bar itself: The giant “A,” the throwback Medieval-looking design. Even the pouch that it comes in, a simple muslin bag sewn by the monks at the monastery. The next bar in the series will be available in Fall 2016, which is a long time to wait for chocolate this good.

There are only 1,098 of these bars, and I have number 647. That means they’re more than half gone. I suggest you get on this whiskey trainimmediately, if not sooner.

The Results of the Triple-Blind Chocolate Tasting

April 5, 2016

Photo courtesy Flickr user Yelp Inc. — *Photo courtesy* *Flickr user Yelp Inc.*

Last week I challenged you guys to virtually decipher the chocolates I featured in a blind chocolate tasting at the last Underground Chocolate Salon, and the results were awesome.

Here were the hints I gave you:

One bar is from Mast Brothers, one from Sol Cacao, and one that I made for an upcoming story and a section in my book.

Smelled sheetrock or something industrial. Gritty texture but smooths out. Flat. Strange aftertaste.
Earthy. “Wet, dead fall.” Leaves, wood, but not in a bad way. Burny. Crumbly. More interesting. Enjoyed it and would pick this over #1 and #3.
Peanuts. Boring, fine, flat. Nice texture.

And here are the responses:

“#1 - Sol Cacao: I’ve never been to Harlem, but the chocolate flavor description matches my mental picture of that borough (industrial & gritty).

#2 - Your creation: I’ve tried some Raaka chocolates before & they were always a bit “earthy” to me.

#3 - Mast Brothers: Unfortunately, we bought a set of 13 chocolates from them when they had a “pop up” in L.A. before the bad press came out (I probably wouldn’t willingly buy them again at this point) & my impression of their chocolates has always been “boring.””

— Patricia Baker, My Year in Chocolate

@MeganGiller Mast, yours, Sol Cacao?
— Daniel Haran (@danielharan) March 30, 2016

@MeganGiller I hope Mast was 1!
— Daniel Haran (@danielharan) March 30, 2016

@MeganGiller that industrial thing can be a deteriorating grinder, or an insufficiently cleaned one on the first batch.
— Daniel Haran (@danielharan) March 30, 2016

Patricia Baker hit it head on: Sol Cacao, mine, Mast Bros. I'm not sure why people liked mine better than the "real" chocolates, but I think it's because people who are interested in food are always looking for new tastes. In this context, "different" doesn't mean "bad." And mine was certainly different, though I thought it was especially terrible. Nate Hodge from Raaka agreed that I'd made truly horrendous chocolate. At first he thought it was because I'd had the beans so long they'd gone rancid. But then he decided that I'd overrefined the sugar, leading to a gummy texture. And of course storing the chocolate in ice cube molds gave it a lovely plastic, freezer-burned taste. Delicious.

PSA: I tried my hand at making chocolate for an upcoming story and for my book. I will in no way be trying to make my own chocolate again: I’ll leave that to the experts. After all, I’m primarily a chocolate EATER…

We Don’t Trust the People Who Make Our Food Anymore

April 4, 2016

Photo courtesy Flickr user Dyniss Rainer — *Photo courtesy* *Flickr user Dyniss Rainer*

On Friday I posted what I thought was a cut-and-dried April Fool’s joke: “Valrhona Outed: Remelting Mast Brothers Chocolate for Years.” But people believed it! I tricked at least two chocolate makers, a handful of people in the chocolate industry, and several journalists (food writers!) and regular folks.

This has taught me two things: First, the chocolate supply chain is so eclipsed that most people don’t have any way to understand it.

Second, and more important, we don’t trust the people who make our food anymore.

That kind of goes without saying for big companies like Monsanto, which have been highly criticized for its corrupt business practices. From where I stand, that corruption and disregard for our health and the environment created the artisan food movement: People wanted to eat real ingredients, made ethically and honestly by other people, not by machines or giant corporations.

But now the distrust has spread to even those small artisan makers. The Mast scandal didn’t help, but it goes much deeper and broader than that. On an elemental level, we don’t trust that people are doing what they say they’re doing. They might poison us, ruin the environment, or sell us something strange. Sadly, it's a given in this day and age. Valrhona has been around for a long time, but it's not a big company. Yet people immediately jumped to the conclusion that it could and would deceive them.

I don’t have an easy answer for this, but I’d love to hear what you think. In the meantime, here are my two favorite responses to the April Fool’s joke:

“MEGAN YOU ARE A CHOCOLATE DETECTIVE”

— Paula Forbes, Facebook

“I always thought that there was a Brooklyn-y sort of funk [to Valrhona] and now the red hairs make sense ... travesty. No wonder they are so secretive.”

— John Cunin, email

Tell me what you think over email (megan@chocolatenoise.com) or on Facebook or Twitter and I'll include your comments in the next Chocolate Today!

Valrhona Outed: Remelting Mast Brothers Chocolate for Years

April 1, 2016

What Lies Beneath the Berets: Part 1

This story was originally published on April 1, 2016 (aka, April Fool's Day).

Late last year, in December 2015, it came to light that Brooklyn darlings Rick and Michael Mast had remelted Valrhona chocolate and passed it off as their own bean-to-bar creations.

Now a French whistleblower who wishes to remain anonymous has revealed that for about four years around that time, Valrhona was actually buying as much Mast Brothers chocolate as it could get its hands on and remelting it into bars that it sold as “fancy French chocolate.” If you bought a bar of Valrhona or a truffle from a snobby chocolatier from 2007 to 2011, you were actually eating artisan chocolate made in the Masts’ tiny apartment that had been "accidentally" shipped to France, remelted, and then sold as Valrhona's own.

I reached out to Valrhona, which had this to say: “Mon dieu! Pomplamousse. Putain—er, purée.”

They assured me that they recognized the mistake within one millisecond of putting a piece of chocolate in their mouth.

Stay tuned for Parts 2 through 4, where I rehash the same thing in excruciating detail.

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1. The prices are too high.

2. Scale is a problem.

3. A big company can make good chocolate.

4. Makers should target the home baking crowd.

5. Only make a single-origin bar with really special cacao.

6. Blends can be amazing.

6. Ethics should guide your business.

7. Making money in this business isn’t easy.

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