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Our Second Whisky & Chocolate tasting with Anverness.

By on July 17, 2012 in Tastings & Events

Anverness and Choqoa recently joined forces again to setup a fantastic Whisky and Chocolate tasting event. We accomodated a full house, people who were all very curious to join our journey of aroma’s, flavors and sensations.

The pairings we offer pass by far the idea of putting red wine with meat and white wine with fish. We take it a lot further, offering genuine one-to-one pairings where one specific whisky elevates one specific chocolate. With our previous experiences in mind, we raised the bar again approving our pairings. Should I first bite the chocolate, or rather begin with a sip from the whisky? Given the complexity of aromas in both, getting them together is truly a challenge.
Peter and I have been working hard to try and taste over 60 combinations of whisky and cacao. Some don’t result in anything special, others just walk together fine, few pairings really create a clash. the cream of pairings however yield wonderful and fine sensations that surpass the individual elements. And those are the ones we offer: world-class whisky and chocolate pairings.

Photo taken from our Whisky Import Belux tasting.

We came with a very challenging chocolate selection, that I would never run, unless it were with these fine accompanying whisky’s. We kicked off with the bold François Pralus Vanuatu, shaking our general idea on chocolate. Putting then 3 different bars of Pacari opened people’s eyes on origins and single region chocolate. But we also matched Original Beans ‘Beni Wild Harvest’ and a Rogue Chocolatier ‘Silvestre’, a unique opportunity to taste the results of different chocolate makers working with the same Bolivian beans.
The ‘Cru Virunga’ from Congo and the brand new Menakao from Madagascar closed the series of complex pleasures.

The exquisite whisky’s we offered included highly premium bottles from the likes of Bushmills, Glenn Garioch, Tullibardine, Glendronach, Benromach, Ledaig… to name a few. Along the pairings we shared background information on both food & drinks.

@Choqoa Heerlijke whiskey & chocolate tasting gisteren. Openbaring. Tot een volgende keer. *

Tx @Choqoa om je fascinerende chocolades te koppelen met wonderbaarlijke whiskeys #choqoa  *

No use trying to describe how it feels. Those who attended where at least impressed and very pleased with our pairings, proof their reactions. They were gladly sharing – if not bragging about – their experiences with their friends through Twitter and Facebook.
But above all, they had a great time discovering the wonderful sensations of origine chocolate. Will you be next?

 

Choqoa’s home brewed cacao experience, from bean to bar

By on January 28, 2011 in On Chocolate & Cacao

What would it take me to make a home brewed chocolate ‘bar’. On a lazy Sunday afternoon I took the time to have some fun with roasted beans I had from Pralus, and some standard kitchen tools. Curiosity was at the heart of the experiment: what happens when you go through some steps of making chocolate?

Choqoa Chocolate Bar Experiment

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…

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Choqoa introduces the finest origins to Barry-Callebaut

By on April 8, 2010 in Tastings & Events

Who would have ever thought of this scenario? I could have dreamed about it,… but it actually happened! This week I gave a Choqoa Tasting workshop for the European team at Barry Callebaut HQ in Wieze, and introduced them to ‘my world’ of premium origin chocolates.

Both my curiosity to their reactions and above all what I could learn from them myself, overruled any reason of being nervous. In the end this was not about pleasing them with good chocolates, it was about sitting together and explore the amazing varieties great cacao has to offer us.

We started our session with a Pacari, and I also brought Francois Pralus, Bonnat, Michel Cluizel, Domori, and Akesson’s. Especially for this Callebaut team I equally shared a nutty TCHO bar from the US and opened an extraordinary fine Criollo ‘Porcelana’ bar from Domori.
With every bar I gave some inspiring background on the brand, the region and bean type, shared a personal memory from my youth or revealed a very particular process that creates signature tastes for a passionate chocolate maker.
We talked about the idea and relevance of percentages, complex genetics of cacao, the ‘myth’ of Belgian chocolate, and consumer preferences across countries as well.

It was just great to discover together with such a team how different cacao flavors can develop, even within a single small geographical area. There were several Venezuela’s on the table and most of the participants were astonished how very different these cacao bars did taste! Whether it was wonderfully fruity or way too sour, very balanced aromas or flavors jumping around, all together we rediscovered the incredible variety fine origin cacao brings to our palate.

The personal Top 3 from the participating Vice President?

  1. Michel Cluizel “Vila Gracinda”
  2. Bonnat “Hacienda El Rosario”
  3. Domori Criollo “Porcelana”

Let’s hope this saga continues, for there is so much more we can learn from each other, when a passionate guy meets and innovative leading company. A big thanks to Barry Callebaut for inviting me to share my obsession!
Once more it confirmed that chocolate is one of the most inspiring, intriguing and passionate products in the world :)

Continue reading for details on the tasted bars…

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Report: Choqoa Tasting Event 10.2

By on March 3, 2010 in Reviews, Tastings & Events

Wrapping up our second tasting this year, again it’s an evening to which I can look back loaded with sensations and discoveries that are changing people’s mind on dark origin chocolate. In our beautiful loft-lounge style setting I introduced the cacao harvest & production process, to show people how careful this pretty sexy tree needs to be treated to give us such fine chocolate. Every tasting session is somewhat different and the Q&A was focused around Belgium not being ‘The Promised Land’ of chocolate (anymore), the scary variety of substances in chocolate bars, en tips to keep and store chocolate.

Choqoa Chocolate Tasting Events
Chocolate and its plethora of surrounding topics always make a great conversation starter, so pretty soon we had a good vibe, getting us open to enter the tasting part. After 4 bars only, people were amazed already by my broad offering and the variety in tasting sensations, even ‘less appreciated aroma’s’ were adding to overall discovery experience. :)
Noteworthy where also organic Pacari, the recent Akesson’s and absolutely the handcrafted Amano Jembrana, which I exclusively got from the USA directly from founder Art Pollard, with a big help from Martin at SeventyPercent as well in London.
These treasures aside I also showed a bloomed bar of Willie’s (don’t know how that happened actually), and wowed them with the Michel Cluizel ‘Grand Lait 45% milk bar’ (‘Is this milk chocolate?!’), shared unroasted and roasted cacao beans I received from Pralus, and put the cherry on the cake with the Pralus 100% as the usual über chocolate experience!

You can tell it was fun if people say they would come back for another tasting session, hope to see you next time as well!

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Report: Choqoa Tasting Event 10.1

By on February 10, 2010 in Tastings & Events

The first Choqoa Tasting Event this year was again very different from the previous editions, and not only for the reason that people came from across the country to attend our Antwerp session!

Choqoa Chocolate Tastings

Among the attending chocolate explorers we had Gunther, one of the founders of a chocolate brand (Baru, Diepenbeek), eager to learn about making his own chocolate in some future; Geert, a dedicated chocolatier & patissier who passionately cares about his base Valrhona couverture (Patisserie Vercruysse, Kortijk); and Mo, who runs an inspiring lunch bar and is a former winner of the Best Sandwich competition!

I found it pretty intriguing given their background they often did heard of several of the top chocolate brands we tasted, but hadn’t take the effort or had the chance to taste every variety that they could get their hands on? On the other side also some US brands like Taza and TCHO were not unknown and I was happy to have a TCHO ‘Fruity’ bar on the tasting table (thanks to @ActiveLife). And with brands like Zotter and Pacari, I had something new to offer even for these professionals :)

It was utmost pleasant and charming to see how participants discovered variations in freshness, color, melting patterns and lingering aftertastes by themselves. Even to the detail where they felt one bar more coming up in front or gathering in the back of their tongues and palates. All added their views and knowledge on chocolate and food so we got some lenghty talks along the tasting session as well.

Eventually, again this gourmet chocolate tasting event was full of fun, sharing tasting impressions and notes, discovering the immersive world of real fine chocolate, and brainstorming on future possibilities!

Continue reading for details on the tasted bars…

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