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Choqoa Introduces Real Cacao Stories at TEDxFlanders / Youth 2012

By on October 25, 2012 in On Chocolate & Cacao, Tastings & Events

TED.com is a fantastic platform where people share there knowledge and experience in passionate ways. Drawing millions of viewers and fans across the world, I was no less than honored to be invited at the local TEDxFlanders / Youth event. The committee appears to be a big fan of Choqoa, the passion and  stories, and proposed to bring both a talk on stage and a workshop to top it off.

Educating some 130! kids from various nationalities and languages about the real taste of cacao & fine chocolate. It wasn’t an easy challenge, but fun! In less than 10 minutes I guided them through the origins of cacao, the difference between cacao and chocolate, a change of cultural habits and false assumptions on its health potentials. I could talk a lot more of course, but I decided to do something better: have all these kids taste fine origin chocolate!

It was my biggest tasting event ever… I distributed a truck load of samples to all of them; 2 chocolate chunks and a cacao bean. And then we performed a “Slow Chocolate” tasting, supporting the campaign from our friends at SeventyPercent.com. It was worth a movie to see all those faces turn into happiness.

The feedback I got from the TEDxFlanders team was more than flattering.

“It was so nice to work with you, and on behalf of our team we thank you so much for your efforts… When I talked to kids at the end of the day, a lot of them thought the chocolate workshop was the highlight of their day.”

Here is my presentation to share with you. Feel free to contact me for any idea or performance. Looking forward to open up the wonderful world of origin chocolate to many many more kids, children and their parents. Will you help?

Caffènation barista team judges Choqoa chocolate bars

By on March 18, 2010 in Reviews

Last week I visited Antwerp’s finest coffee bar: Caffènation. Rob, the owner, is super passionate about coffee and I’ve seen him building up his wonderful cosy, quality coffee bar for several years now. He was eager to find out about my chocolate, so eventually last week I dropped one of those famous Choqoa Discovery Packs at the famous barista place.

His fellow coffee servants swiftly gathered around the mysterious black bag and upon seeing the contents, they surely had hard times waiting for opening that newly discovered black gold. Eventually however, the proof is in the tasting, and seeing some of Belgium’s most famous coffee cup champs rolling their eyes on munching these wonderful chocolate bars, was a pleasure all mine!

Rob mailed me some days later with more detailed notes, so here it is: the uncensored Caffènation review on some of the ‘Selected by Choqoa’ chocolate bars. It’s great to see how people take a personal twist on taste :)

François Pralus – Madagascar: 7/10 Citric, a very ‘natural’ taste, somewhat ‘beastly’ even, needs time to adapt yourself too it.
Bonnat – Trinité: 9/10 Very sweet and buttery. Gives a sensation of melted chocolate with orange and cherry. Delicious!
Bonnat – “Hacienda El Rosario” : 6.5/10 Somewhat in between, slightly too powerful on the palate en brute. Very complex though.
François Pralus – Venezuela : 5/10 Very ‘bitter’ and pretty harsh.
Michel Cluizel – Vila Gracinda : 9/10 My favourite. Starts really creamy and evolves into huge piles of tropical fruit with fresh made chocolate mousse.

A big thanks to sharing your impressions and feel free to follow the Caffènation blog. I’m looking forward to publish many more responses from people who rediscover superb chocolate with Choqoa!

Back to the Future: Chocolat Martougin

By on January 5, 2010 in On Chocolate & Cacao

“Where and when did this all started for you?” … It’s surely one of the questions that eventually always popup when people have an obsessive passion. No different for me it is. The question rose a couple of times lately amongst various friends and new people I met, and it made me think again of my very first memories to chocolate…

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?

Chocolat Martougin

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?

One month of Choqoa.com

By on October 24, 2008 in Marketing

So it’s been one month at Choqoa.com and what happened? At first I’m really happy myself to finally have created a place to share my passion. I really should have started this earlier, but speaking with hindsight is always easy. Blogging takes time and energy, though passion fuels the fire, so let’s rock on to make the story pay off. It’s a great after all to synthesize my addiction in words that I can easily share with you.

At present the site is gaining visitors from all continents, which very nice to spot and also the main reason for me to blog in English. In the map below you see where visitors come from and I indicated for fun the growing zone of cacao, which is about 20° up and down the equator. See for yourself:

Next to direct traffic and already some interesting Google search results, I also get a good amount of visits through my Cacao Aficionado photos on Flickr. It’s encouraging to see that both hobbies strengthen each other. The Choqoa on Twitter account also helps a little to drive int’l traffic. It’s pleasant to spot some people here that are equally into (digital) marketing and share the curiosity and passion for chocolate (jacksonbr, jomarbr, timwillems, Emakina). Stats are picking up slowly, there definitely is still work to do for building more extensive traffic, so I also created a Choqoa Facebook FanPage to which I invite all of you to join too!

And also off line in real life, a lot of encouraging things happened. On my chocolate safari in Düsseldorf I discovered new brands like Hussel, Coppeneur and Maglio, and also the Neuhaus bars bought later on in Antwerp seem interesting. I went behind the scenes at chocolatier Goossens, and all of the people whom I had taste from ‘my’ chocolate reacted exactly as I hoped, though most of the time I was rather nervous awaiting their first impressions. :-)
I went networking on the Max Havelaar FairTrade Colloquium and was very enthusiast meeting the people from Callebaut over there. They were charmed by my story and invited me to share more about our passion. In return I learned a lot from them too, and above all they were really helpful in providing a lot of new information on the cacao market. Their Account Manager was even so friendly to provide me with the origin samples for that other great offline experience: my first wine & chocolate pairing.

As for actual business resulting from this blog, I’m excited by getting a freelance job for one of the world’s most famous chocolatier brands, and I’ll be helping to develop their online & digital strategy. Next to that, it’s still about exploring various opportunities for how we eventually really may get into cacao business: whether it is venturing in a self-owned project or by joining the industry at a marketing related position, that is still open. Next milestone will be the Salon du Chocolat, next week in Paris!

Chocolatier Goosens. Behind The Scenes

By on October 6, 2008 in Marketing, Trips

This weekend we had the 2008 edition of Open Company Day in Flanders. Antwerp’s famous Maître Chocolatier Erik Goossens open his doors too to the public for a free peek behind the scenes in his shop and factory. It was evident that I went for a visit to taste the atmosphere, and with typical Belgian weather, it didn’t take to long to queue.

Chocolatier Goosens. Behind The Scenes

Erik Goossens is very passionate about making chocolates and also does rather good marketing around it. Next to the famous “Antwerpse Handjes“, a hand shaped praline filled with the typical Antwerp liquor “Elixir d’Anvers”, that inspires ‘hospitality’, he recently also launched a series inspired by the origin of Antwerp typography and printing as a tribute to Plantin & Moretus. Available pralines are shaped as 16th century lead letter for printing pressings. During the visit, you could see all of his pralines come alive from the tempering chocolate wheels, through stuffing and covering machines, getting their finishing touch and disappear in worldwide shipping ballotins, handled with care.

Erik Goossens is also the author of the “Chocolate Codex“, a comprehensive and passionate book I’ll surely buy some time, with a great overview on everything cacao. History, origins & usages, the bean and production process, industry overview and a selection of major brands pass the revue, spiced with some unique recipes. This book or Codex ‘breathes’ chocolate all over, a recommended read that comes with a golden finish.

I was one of the last visitors and while taking some photo’s of the atelier, chocolatier Goossens joked at me if I was taking them for a magazine, and we started chatting. I started talking about my dark cacao passion, to which he at first reacted with caution, probably given the situation that he is mainly working on pralines and sweet chocolate bites. Though since we have a shared good friend, I’ll soon go for a beer with them to continue about pure chocolate bars and origin cacao… In the meantime you can have a look behind the scenes too on my set of Chocolatier Goossens photos on Flickr.