Tag Archives: event

5 People Who Changed My Chocolate Life

by on August 21, 2011 in On Chocolate & Cacao

I guess this is a nice time to share something different with you. Looking back at my trail to a growing passion for chocolate, I was seeking the stepping stones to Choqoa. Sharing what bars changed my chocolate life is for another blog post, first I wanted to look for people.
Keeping it brief was rather difficult, but these people definitely helped shaping what Choqoa is today.

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

Bertil AkessonMeeting 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

Steve DeVriesI 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!

Choqoa opens its new chocolate season with taste!

Choqoa opens its new chocolate season with taste!

by on October 4, 2010 in Tastings & Events

Thursday last week, it was ‘officially’ the moment to reopen the chocolate rediscovery season with Choqoa’s Tasting Events. From the very first time I organized such a chocolate tasting with a group of people, I realized it is a great setting for curious minds to join their senses, and enjoy sharing their experiences and sensations.

From all the past tastings, I gathered the constructive feedback and spontaneous suggestions that were given by enthusiasts aficionado’s. So I reworked the tasting concept a little bit to give it another vibe. Next to that, a lot of people subscribed, we were actually heading for a full house, first time! And amongst them, we had both a lot of totally new people joining Choqoa and some first-hour superfans who returned again for another Choqoa discovery. That felt absolutely awesome, thanks to all of you!
There were also some students from the C-MD project, twitter folks who got to Choqoa via my “1000th Tweet” contest, and even a young researcher from the CacaoLab at the Ghent University, how cool is that? So although it wasn’t the first time, I was a bit nervous though, really.

Choqoa
(foto by Choqoa fan Peter Pvw04 – Nettooor)

Lucky all those who were there, since my recent trip to the USA (a post on that soon) made me return with a lot of exclusive offerings from great chocolate makers like Amano, Taza, Patric, the Mast Brothers (who I met in person) and Rogue Chocolatier, my current “editor’s choice“. I put a lot of those fantastic american bars in the line-up, sure enough it made the whole evening a fun time to rediscover chocolate.
For extra fun I even opened the world’s infamous “Mo’s Bacon Bar” from Vosges chocolate. And yes: for those who dared, there was eventually on popular demand a piece of Cote d’Or “Noir de Noir” available. For those who were a bit skeptical on the differences… it convinced all that we are on a new level with Choqoa, oyé!

And that’s precisely what we all enjoyed: a great evening rediscovering chocolate, the wonderful world of premium cacao, a bit of its production, a touch of history and a twist of culture. And off course, all these wonderful aromas and flavors that you would never have believed to find in pure cacao. It was great to find all your positive reactions so swiftly on Twitter and Facebook, keep sharing the passion for Choqoa and help everybody to rediscover chocolate!

Every last Thursday of the month, that’s the day that I mostly try to schedule my tasting events on. So keep an eye on the events on the Choqoa Facebook FanPage or our event listing on EventBrite.

Here is the list of bars we had this time: (after the break)

  1. Bonnat “Trinité” 75%
    deep chocolatey bar, the brand that started it for me
  2. Pacari “Esmeraldas” 60%
    surprises you with its fresh, floral tones but also the dextrose feeling
  3. Patric “Madagascar – Sambirano” 67%
    chewy and citric, great development
  4. El Ceibo 71%
    the bar from Chloé, not too bad at all, a very nice discovery with a typical Bolivian touch
  5. François Pralus “Djakarta”
    very unexpected, and therefore very good
  6. Taza Stone Ground 70%
    almost everybody was in awe, and appreciated the unique taste beyond the typical ground grittiness
  7. Cote d’Or Noir de Noir (54% – what’s in a name)
    yeah yeah, finally I am sure and (re)assured that eveybody tastes the difference!
  8. Mast Brothers “Ocumare de la Costa”
    waw this is top-notch liquorice experience
  9. Rogue Chocolatier “Piura”
    I love Colin’s bars and this very very exclusive Piura proves his passion and craftsmanship again. Wonderful.
  10. Amano “Dos Rios”
    the Dos Rios is far beyond chocolate, the aromas you experience with this cacao change everything you think about chocolate
  11. Vosges “Mo’s Bacon Bar”
    hilarious, food innovation awarded, just for fun!
  12. François Pralus “Le 100%”
    the ultimate cacao experience; it was, is and will always be the last bar I will serve at my tasting events
Report: The 2nd Choqoa Tasting Event

Report: The 2nd Choqoa Tasting Event

by on December 11, 2009 in On Chocolate & Cacao, Tastings & Events

The second ‘official’ Choqoa Tasting event yesterday in Antwerp was a great fun chocolate celebration. We were with a group of 16 enthusiast people; friends bringing their own friends, and even an older couple who got the Tasting Event as a birthday gift from their daughter: what a great surprise! And also my chocolate buddy Sofie ‘Chocolaterie’ from Barry Callebaut, happily joined this event.

DSC_5070

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!

Continue Reading →

Report: The First Choqoa Tasting Event

Report: The First Choqoa Tasting Event

by on November 29, 2009 in Reviews, Tastings & Events

In Belgium, home of the world famous ‘Belgian Chocolates’, I’ve taken up the challenge to share and show people the path to real chocolate, fine origin artisan cacao.
After a long while I decided to do so starting with the now infamous Choqoa Sampler packs, and also by organizing chocolate tasting events to have the means and moments to personally inspire people with “the food of the gods”. My first event took place some days ago and here’s how people responded to chocolate:

We were with a nice group of about 10. After some earlier small informal tryouts I took some learnings with me and started off with a small introduction on the sexy cacao tree, pods and beans, and briefly explained the making process. We had some good questions then on the differences with industrial brands like Callebaut and I showed some pics of the Amano Chocolate factory.
Mosts really appreciated this introduction, because the cacao tree is funny, sexy and full of secrets, and how often do you wonder yourself about the source of your food?

Choqoa Chocolate Tasting Event

Off to the tasting then! I learned from Martin Christy, founder of SeventyPercent.com, to make a program instead of just grabbing for some bars, so I made small plates with chunks from all the bars to hand out. I also distributed some sheets to take notes and a tasting wheel to have some reference to our taste buds. All this helpst to take the clutter of the table and focus on tasting chocolate. The Amedei was a great opener to ‘set the bar’and we then moved on to plenty of other bars, the full list is below this post.

Time after time most were pretty intrigued by the variety of aromas and sensations, though they suggested getting some more guidance in what flavors they should detect. A good point to work on! I would also have put some more variety in the selection, I still had too many options, but off course it also depends on your stock as well.

One of the participants, Johan, is doing a great job in sharing the message for me and he brought me a fresh Amano Ocumare milk from San Fransisco. All of us were really surprised by this very untypical milk sensation; it’s a superb bar that gives a whole new level to milk chocolate. I’m leaving the idea of ‘percentages’ more and more and this bar proves it’s very very possible.

As a special for this evening I also served a double fine whisky and chocolate pairing: but you can read all about this tantalizing pairing experience in my previous blog post.

Those true discoveries were the better moments, and most likely everybody said to have had a very nice tasting experience and gladly returned home with their own chocolate bars.

Check out the next Choqoa tastings en events on my EventBrite page, see you soon!

Read on for details of all the tasted bars!

Continue Reading →

Zaabär Chocolate and Facebook Marketing

by on October 1, 2008 in Marketing, Trips

The new Belgian brand Zaabär has not much ado with dark origin cacao, they mainly focus on flavoured bars, tempered chocolate with a variety of herbs and spices, very similar that other relatively new brand Newtree. However here’s a nice social marketing story worth a blog post for me.

Zaabär Chocolate

A while ago I got invited to join a Facebook group from Zaabär chocolates lovers. Not sure how they found me, but most likely they must have been searching on location and interest. Wich is already interesting by itself.

Accepting the invite I discovered Zaabär is a new Belgian chocolate brand, launching from a shop in Brussels. Clicking along brought they have created a profile for ZaaBär, and also group “Zaabär chocolates lovers“, and even a fan page. This brand was not just getting on board and creating merely presence, but it also gave the impression that they knew what they were after: “Zaabär is new on facebook and would like to communicate with you.”
I was glad to discover this new brand, not only because of my addiction to chocolate – so they were spot on inviting me, but since I got to know the brand through a social network. Their recurrent activity on FaceBook kept getting my attention and soon I was wondering how far I could push this brand in reaching out to their people.

By inviting people to become fan, or friend with Zaabär on Facebook, the brand was continuously trying to enhance visibility and reach a.o. in the profile news feeds from people joining. After a couple of days when the fan groups started to get some base, I thought that in helping them to get this visibility the first members would deserve to be rewarded. So I posted a message on their wall asking to reward the Facebook members who are thriving their awareness by joining Zaabär. For instance by sending coupons or sample bars. In the end we got to know the brand, but it’s all about the product isn’t it?

Now that you’ve invited people to the “Zaabär chocolates lovers” group, why not send us a coupon or sample bar to really convince us why we should love Zaabar?

To my surprise (well, they had no choice …) they listened instantly to my suggestion, and posted an answer back on the wall:

You are completely right, Evert. Have a look on our events. We have created a special offer for our first Facebook movers. Be aware, first meeting tomorrow at 3.40pm to get 25€ free chocolates.

Isn’t this just wonderfull? Not only are they reaching out and listening to what people are asking. In their response they are clever enough to create the “Zaabär offer for first Facebook movers” event. Another Facebook tool allowing for another way to push trough the feeds. Spot on. This is how they are setting it up.

Saturday, at 3.40 pm, we offer 25€ of free chocolates bought at our Factory Shop. To get this offer, come exactly at 3.40 at our Factory Shop with three of your friends.

This offer is only aimed to our group members. Print the page of Facebook where you figure and give it to the shop seller or simply give you name.

Not sure if this isn’t too restricting but anyway that’s exactly what I did. Got down to Brussels, and discovered this brand and their bars in real life, collecting 25€ of free chocolate. And off course checked the secret of their potential success, with a very helpful and friendly shop manager showing me around – he even added me as a friend on Facebook, off course. He mentioned several people really reacted on their online Facebook announcement and came down to the store, a small step, but it was a first effective step! The Zaabär group now counts some 240 members and keeps updating its page with news, pictures and events, like the recent Zaabär Megastore opening.

As mentioned in the beginning of this post, Zaabär is offering sweets rather than chocolate, and that’s not really my cup of tea. But do check out Zaabär on Facebook, and share your comments on what you think or like about this.

(Note: I posted this story earlier on another blog, but re-edited it for Choqoa.com)