My Aunt (and Stéphane Bonnat)

Once upon a bean, my aunt came back from France. Since long I was the chocolate guy of the family. She gifted me 6 different bars of Bonnat, a first glimpse on the goods, total disappointment.
What is this French brand I had never heard of? They’re all the same 75% bars?! (yeah the percentages, he). Thanks though. Let’s just unwrap and tuck into it.
And I still remember that couch where I ate a chunk of all 6 different origin bars. For those in the know, that’s where my lust became a passion. My aunt changed me from candy to chocolate with the discovery of origins .

Bertil Akesson

Meeting Bertil was a fine coinicidence. He reacted to a blogpost on one of my tasting events, where we had tasted his bar. I replied with enthusiasm, and at all odds, he happened to stay in Antwerp for a while.
We scheduled and soon I ended up spending a whole morning with Bertil. I had no agenda, just driven by curiosity to learn. Our encounter was pleasantly informal, and we enjoyed talking things on chocolate and life.
Bertil Akesson changed my knowledge about how plantations – and its owners, work with chocolate makers. I had never been in talk with a person on the trader/plantation side. But Bertil shed light in that dark knowledge spot of me, with simple facts and personal stories.

Steve Devries

I feel very fortunate to have spent a 10-day cacao tour in Costa Rica with Steve DeVries, and a fine gang of other cacao aficionado’s. Needles to say, this trip changed a whole perspective.
Steve was a geiser of knowledge, guiding us through the fields of chocolate uncensored. The whole gang talked beans and bars 24/7. I have some videos coming up soon.
Hightlights can be read on my posts on Costa Rica.

You & All Choqoa Fans

Yes, all of you too 100%.  Those who read, and eat, those who share, those who come to taste. I should do more on helping you spreading the passion for fine chocolate still. Inspire me!
All your encouraging responses to Choqoa Selections and the Choqoa Tasting Events so far, change a bit how I look at cacao and appreciate chocolate. Because you share with me how you rediscover chocolate, and I’ll be happy to give more in return.

Looking forward to your comments, and keep on sharing Chocolate!

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1. Costa Rica finally changed my relation with chocolate.
2. Report: The First Choqoa Tasting Event
3. Choqoa opens its new chocolate season with taste!

Meet Carlos Eichenberger from Danta Chocolate, Guatemala.

The new Choqoa Tastings will carry adventurous themes, and our first session features a special guest, all the way from Guatemala!
Carlos Eichenberger from Danta Chocolate is producing his own chocolate in the country of origin, Guatemala. He buys already fermented cacao and then starts with roasting and goes all the way to wrapping each bar.
Sourcing beans from specific “fincas” (or cacao estates) he currently offers crafted bars from ‘Los Ujuxtes’ and ‘Las Acacias’. On top of that he’s also trying to work some legendary Venezuelan beans, let’s hope we will be able to taste all of them…

While Carlos is in Europe, he will join Choqoa to share his stories with you at our tasting event soon, on September 7th, in Antwerp.

Register now

You can register directly here below for this unique occasion, or on this event’s page for this tasting session. RSVP required! And don’t hesitate to share this with your friends.

For our other future tasting events, more info and details will be updated and shared with you through our tasting events overview.
Let’s rediscover chocolate!

Related Stories:

1. Report: Choqoa Tasting with Carlos Eichenberger, Danta Chocolate, Guatemala.
2. Choqoa opens its new chocolate season with taste!
3. Report: Choqoa Tasting Event 10.2

On Saturday, Steve voluntarily took some of the early arrivers to the vibrant fruit market and showed us around through the various colorful stalls, exposing a wealth of fruit known and unknown to me. The usual mango I had turned out to be unlike any mango I had before, and the cainito was unlike any fruit I ever saw. There were varieties of pineapples, guavas, papayas and limes, fruits with flesh or pulp, with seeds or juice. A contest of deliciousness in flavors unknown!

This extremely tasteful start of the Costa Rica tour triggered a first reflection on appreciating cacao, and more specific chocolate bars. What is the relevance of reviews that focus on listing a series of references to what we know. What use in describing a food to taste like apple, peach and mango if everybody may have a different experience and reference to that flavor? Or even doesn’t know the fruit. I’d love to point out a bar has hints of cas or limon dulce, who will tell me wrong where I live.

In extension of these philosophical meanderings, it reminded me that the places where cacao grows and where chocolate is eaten are far away from each other. Another disruptive thought on appreciating chocolate as we know. Well, just some ‘food for thought’ here, but it intrigues me.

Steve warned us, at the end of the week you will merely know what you don’t know. So what are your thoughts on appreciating and reviewing food?

Related Stories:

1. Costa Rica finally changed my relation with chocolate.
2. Crushing My Passion, all the way to Costa Rica!
3. Choqoa Video: Charley “Woodblock” Wheelock, on tour in Costa Rica.

[photo by Corey'sWorld]

I’m seizing the unique opportunity to join an international program to explore cacao in Costa Rica with Ecole Chocolat. Led by one of the grand icons of fine origin cacao, Steve Devries, we will tour with a small group through different locations:

A week long adventure will take you to the historical roots of cacao growing during harvest. Not only will your chocolate making benefit from a much better understanding of cacao cultivation and processing but you will engage in spirited dialogue on the future of fine chocolate flavor.

On many occasions people ask me where I want to go with Choqoa. The answer is always that I can’t tell. Eventually it’s not me who decides. It’s where my passion leads me, or more correct: the way all of you keep responding to my passion. That’s why I keep on crushing it as hard as I can. Costa Rica will certainly give new directions and inspiration to share.
And I’m looking forward to shake hands with Gary Vaynerchuck tomorrow too on the Phare conference.

Follow Choqoa and help everybody to rediscover chocolate!

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1. Costa Rica finally changed my relation with chocolate.
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All I had was Madagascar beans, cocoa butter, sugar, a Magimix and a hairdryer. So what follows is just for the fun, don’t take it too serious, yet!

Taking of the shell of roasted beans

From François Pralus, I had some Madagascar beans to show for my tasting events. They were already roasted by the master himself, so all I had left to do was take away the shell off the beans. But gosh, what a job! It’s even worse than pistachio nuts. The big thing here was how best to separate the thin fragile shell from the bean itself.

Breaking them gave me too much waste though for this home experiment. I quickly understood why we invented machines for this, ha! I experimented with a hairdryer to blow out the shell pieces, but with a force to weak. The dust cleaner to suck instead of blow (something I learned from the Mast Brothers’ home equipment), but that was to strong though and sucked almost half of my materials! Then I tried outdoors to blow from underneath myself through a sieve. Luckily neighbors were out to miss this foolish looking scene. Hehe…

So I ended up breaking the shells of bean by bean by hand. Big learnings so far. Excellent! Playing around with Mast Brother’s technique works inspiring and now am even more curious how Patric and Rogue or Pralus and Bonnat handle this… Same or different machines? We’ll find out, some day.

Making the liquor / cacao mass

At this stage I’m having 200 grams of pealed, roasted beans. Time to bring in technology called Magimix. Let’s see here what happens if we get those beans turning and spinning for while. For a second I considered hacking the Magimix into something more a grinder, but I stuck with the standard chopping blades. Easy here, just dropping in the beans and push the button.

Very interesting however to see the evolution of things happening. At first the beans are only ‘chopped’ or ground into ever smaller pieces, and then at some stage with the fat coming out more and more, cause of the blades spinning and creating temperature, I slowly saw a paste forming out of the beans. And boy that smell spreading in my kitchen, heavenly! Here I just let it go for while trying to get it to a paste as smooth as possible, but a Magimix has its limits. Ending up now I’m having this gritty paste that tastes just like the beans do. Madagascar style, pretty sour but interesting yummy!

Adding cocoa butter and sugar

When the Magimix seemed to be at the end of its capabilities to make the paste more refined, I thought the time had come to add the extra ingredients. I had bought some cocoa butter in Paris in the fabulous G.Detou foodie store. I simply added the butter to the paste, but I switched from blades to whisk on the Magimix. I thought this would make a more friendly treatment to the chocolate from now on. The gritty paste gave a warm welcome to the butter, and soon they were playing together in something that became like a soup.

For sugar I decided to use icing sugar, since it’s already a bit finer than the regular one. No rocket science involved for now, just let it blend all together. When I thought nothing new was happening, it seemed I was arriving a the end point of this fun home experiment. Technically it’s something like an 80% bar if I do the math. Now up to the final move, pouring this paste into something like a bar.

From paste to… something like a bar

I just poured the soft, warm paste into a simple mould, which went pretty smooth I’d say. Even after it cooled down, there were no ugly bubbles and only subtle textures revealing the pouring flow. Next time I should use a real mould instead of plastic lid though. Make it look a bit more pro : ) The taste development was pretty stuck into sourness though.

Conclusions

The texture off course still is very TAZA like, rough and gritty, however not totally unpleasant to me. The taste though was rather to sour still, almost identical to the aromas of the beans. And it was hard to discover a nice flavour development. Again a though learning that beans need a master to release their talent.
I had it tasted at a Choqoa Tasting event, though I warned everybody this was really for the brave… All fun aside, Kasper from the UGent Cacaolab suggested me to work on a conching thingy, so let’s be creative and see if we can hack some utensil for the next experiment! Your tips are welcome

Related Stories:

1. My first Wine & Chocolate pairing experience
2. Battle of Bonnat: ‘Manufaktum’ Madagascar 100% vs. Cacao Real del Xoconuzco
3. Marcolini Unleashes His Bean-to-bar Passion

What didn’t happen were the many video interviews I planned. Many chocolate people were subject to loaded schedules and the talks I did have left little window for an extra video. So I ended up with only three. And I didn’t shot a single photo. Gosh. Didn’t talk with Stéphane Bonnat, talked but didn’t interview Diego Badaro, and well some other things.
The good news though, I was really glad to run into Clay Gordon again, my inspiring chocophile from the US. Also Bertil Akesson was running a booth for the first time and I finally met a charming Santiago from Pacari. Also nice shaking hands with London’s most talked chocolatier Paul A. Young and Kate Johns, the director of The UK Chocolate Week, and an inevitable warm talk with Valérie from Pralus. It was a great surprise as well to see the Rizek family, the Dominican Republic cacao producer.

My two most inspiring moments were meeting Duane Dove and Chloé Doutre-Rousell. Duane devoted 7 years of his life to revive a true cacao plantation in Tobago, beautiful story. And now he releases his chocolate with the help of François Pralus. And yes I do have a short video with him.
The second encounter with Chloé was the longest talk of the day, but we needed 100 times more time. Her experience, attitude and now the El Ceibo project fired up talks and thoughts on our shared passion. Must be continued. Video, check.

On the chocolate side, it was crowded and the discoveries came from rather unexpected moments. It was not by queuing booths but through sharing passion that those discoveries happened. Tasting the Rizek family chocolate was exciting, trying the ‘El Ceibo Heritage’ was unique, and getting a non commercial sample from a rare Brazil Forastero variety was truly … rediscovering chocolate!

After all an unexpectedly very interesting Salon du Chocolate 2010. And for next year, I do need business cards. Taking a time now to reflect on many things, and do the video edits. More in detail of all of the above soon, for there is of course much more to tell!

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1. Getting ready for the 2010 “Salon du Chocolat” in Paris!
2. Visiting the Salon du Chocolat 2009
3. Video: Interview with François Pralus at Salon du Chocolat

I was really looking forward to taste the fresh juice or “pulp” which is often described as really fruity. And boy it did, I shared it with some friends and we tasted mango, lychee, banana, grapes and more all at the same time: now you would really understand why this is the ‘food of the gods’!

Having several of fresh cacao pods in my hands it was above all about really looking how this fruit works on the inside. And now I could finally see and taste fresh all these great aromas, which so far I only tasted in a finished chocolate bar and look at all the different parts. The inner structure is just beautiful and it’s amazing to see how sophisticated this fruit grows!

See for yourself, and thank you Helena (@imkedielen)!
I’ll pick up the Claudio Corallo bars soon

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Amedei: La Tavoletta Toscano Black 70%

No need to introduce the Italian brother and sister Tessieri that helped putting fine cacao crafting on the map like no other. The 70% Tavoletta smells fresh and flowerfull and this packaging design is timeless.
Chewing on it, it keeps its really fresh character, and almost reminds me of eating fresh raisins. An always present very light chocolate flavour gives persistent support to coffee, red fruit. It won’t let you go that fast and melts down really slowly. The taste curve keeps its pace and sustains a continuous experience, really ‘fleshy’ almost, forcing you to discover the subtleties. A lingering aftertaste only slowly leaves you waiting… for the next chunk.

Zotter: Labooko Nicaragua 80%

This rather new Austrian chocolate maker has some very interesting and unique origin offers, like this Nicaragua. The whole Zotter ‘Labooko’ series come in a unique design wrapping and a 35gr pocket fit size.
A well designed bar that smells very tobacco and leather. This Zotter bar takes a breath, starts slowly and then speeds up to a powerful release of unique flavors: liquorice, pepper, coffee that build up strong to the 80% and then go steep downhill your throat with a clear end point, a remarkable experience curve, hinting for molasses, walnut and mushroom, ending with surprising fruity goodbye.

Bonnat: Puerto Cabello 75%

I could not resist more chocolate and had to unfold another one. With a fresh delivery of some Puerto Cabello bars, I looked forward for what is said to be one of Bonnat’s best bars in his white wrap collection. Opening the bar you recognize the typical perfectly tempered bar that looks shiny and silky. The smell is a promise for something deep and rich, chocolaty, with nuts, caramel and cinnamon or clove?
Put this bar on your tongue and you will be welcomed by a very mature cacao experience, entering your palate with a polite bow. Then it starts to dance and waltz to every bud on your tongue releasing one flavor after the other back and forth: cookies, cloves, nuts in a moving mouth choreography with berries and tropical fruit. There is not a single touch of bitterness at all, and the 75% makes it a perfect balance of intensity and flavor. Damn I ate it all!

The Verdict

I’m not taking into account the wonderful Bonnat here. As for the experience itself, the Amedei and Zotter were a perfect opposites attrack! Amedei slow and straight, the Nicaragua like a tsunami.
Depending on your music preference, I’d say Amedei is that great piece of Classical music, where the Zotter Nicaragua rather plays the contrabass solo on a standards jazz record. Look at the packaging differences, it says it all! Though all three are awesome bars, I felt pretty jazzy today, so for me Zotter ‘Lobooka’ Nicaragua wins on points from Amedei ‘La Tavoletta’!

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2. The London Collection feat. world’s best Amedei
3. Battle of Bonnat: ‘Manufaktum’ Madagascar 100% vs. Cacao Real del Xoconuzco

Yes, you’ve probably read that Chocolat Bonnat opened my mind and started my deep passion for origin cacao more than a decade ago, but long before that I was already hooked onto dark chocolate, it being the only ‘candy’ I allowed myself. The repeat question actually made me wonder again lately… what is really the very first remembrance of chocolate that I can bring to my mind?

The answer didn’t took me more than 10 seconds. I guess I was at the age of 5, or 6. It was at my grandmother’s place, where in the lower right space from the cupboard was always laying a big 500 gram bloc of chocolate, wrapped in dark blue paper with a bright yellow border. It had bold white letters ‘BLOC’, and I remembered vividly that at every visit it offered me a piece of bittersweet pleasure. It was the typical so called ‘bittersweet’ chocolate from that era, astringent in flavour by nature and sweetened with sugar to soften the taste.

I tried to find it back online, but it was – again- my ‘chocolate aunt’ from France that was able to pass me the real brandname of that chocolate: Martougin! I googled around and shivered when I saw back that unforgettable blue-yellow wrapping, to discover that this was in fact a very respectable chocolate factory, made in Antwerp (Belgium) with a pretty nice heritage, but more on that later, maybe.

For me it’s a wonderful trigger to my youth, and proves again that chocolate really does something to childhood memories. And it will for sure do so many more things in the future…

So, what is really the very first remembrance of chocolate that you can bring to your mind?

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Learnings from previous sessions made me make a selection with bigger care and offer a broader variety of cacao experiences. I also therefore bought some Domori and found myself a bunch of bars I hadn’t taste myself yet: Zotter, Pacari, and Bouga.
I started with a small introduction into cacao trees and pods, the bean-to-bar process, and to all delight Sofie from Callebaut passionately helped explain into detail the various steps, with good interaction from the crowd.

Off to the tasting! I projected the Amano tasting wheel in the screen to give guidance to the tasting, and people really enjoyed discovering such a chocolate sensations. This time I had a good variety that really added value to the tasting experience and was more than appreciated. It was pleasurable to see people taking chocolate to the next level! Everybody shared his impressions so the atmosphere was pretty comfortable. Halfway already people giggled and said they started to feel the chocolate raising to their brain, giving them the cacao ‘high’ Yes it’s positive magic.

All in all we had 10 different chocolates, list & details are below, and everybody really said to have enjoyed, and even would return another time! Everybody happily took their 2 included bars home, bought some more even to continue sharing the passion.
I’m already looking forward to the next event, you’re all invited to join Choqoa!

Read on for details of all the tasted bars!

List of tasted bars:

1. Michel Cluizel “Mangaro”:
   Always a great opener, everybody loves this citric bar.
2. Valrhona “Guanaja”:
   Introducing a classic, this bar was the first to delight the lovers of bitter dark chocolate. I explained that this legendary name refers to Christopher Columbus when he landed in 1502 on the Island of Guanaja, discovering the cacao been the first time.
3. François Pralus “République Dominicaine”:
   A light tinted bar with rougher sensations switching from a fresh start to a deeper chocolate melt down.
4. Domori “Sur del Lago”:
   Domori has a very strong aroma and a swift powerful tasting curve, with coffee, caramel, butter and light fruity flavors.
5. Pacari “Manabi” 65%
   First time trying this ‘raw cacao’ bar. The specific fermentation gives good taste and fruity aromas, a nice discovery!
6. Bonnat “Hacienda El Rosario”:
   Definitely one of Bonnat’s best bars, lengthy tasting pleasure, approved by the public.
7. François Pralus “Indonésie”:
   A sharp starter bar, a whirlwind of spices, marking the signature taste of a chocolate maker, like François Pralus.
8. Zotter “Nicaragua 80%”:
   Excellent discovery from Austria, this 80% Nicaragua bar contains a secret pinch of salt, and gives a very pleasant aroma evolution for such an intense cacao.
9. François Pralus “Le 100%”:
   From Madagascar this very red colored bar is an experience, not a chocolate. It’s always fun to see people react to this
10. Michel Cluizel ‘Grand Lait 45%’:
    Time for a break, an awarded milk bar that makes you rethink milk chocolate.
11. François Pralus “Chuao”:
    Revealing the story of the Chuao village and cacao war, people enjoyed to discover the complexity of this bean, that offers so many aromas that each bite has its own pleasure.

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