Tag Archives | Paris

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!

Preparing for “Le Salon du Chocolat” in Paris

By on October 22, 2008 in Trips

The “Salon du Chocolat” goes around worldwide with famous fairs in New York, Tokyo, Beijing, even Moscow, and next week shows in Paris with a 4 day fair, from October 29th till November 2nd. A one-way cacao Valhalla, the ultimate theme park, or eventual deception… I’m haven’t really got a clear view about what to expect from the 2008 “Salon du Chocolat“.

It is hard to imagine entering the halls in Portes de Versailles, that has more than of 12.000m² to offer for chocoholics, cacaophiles, and aficionados. I only know I’m going one day out of four, for the first time, and the plan is to discover more about artisan & origin chocolate explorations. With a vast range of all known top chocolatiers and artisan brands present at the fair, there sure must be lots of fun to share with other people.

The Paris team for the Salon conducted an amusing survey together with Le Figaro/Madame, on the French and their chocolate habits. Some fun facts:

  • Men and women, everyone prefers dark chocolate (50%), followed by milk chocolate (35%) and white chocolate (15%).
  • Solitaire or social? 24% of men do not share their munches … against 22%  of women. Shared with family, between lovers, then friends, chocolate however still remains primarily a pleasure that is offered to and experienced together.
  • 41% of women believe that eating chocolate gives them more pleasure than making love …
  • In buying habits, respondents like to buy their chocolate in priority from small but high quality artisan chocolatiers (48%) and in a much lesser extent from big industrial brands (23%).

I’ve been spotting the 400+ participants list, which includes some 140 chocolatiers, and I’m glad to see a whole range of favourites in place: Domori, Lindt, La Maison du Chocolat, Maison Bonnat, Michel Cluizel, NewTree, Phillipe Pascoët, Pralus and the Belgian new Zaabär too.
Some others to discover are: Nestlé, De Bondt and Cacao Barry (from Meulan). I’ll also seek after bars from Dagoba, and USA brands like De Vries, Scharffen Berger, Guittard, and maybe TCHO, although none of these are listed with a stand. Big misses are Amedei, Valrhona and German brands like Coppeneur.

I’ll keep you posted with writings later on!
Any other brands you think of are worth checking out?

On a quest for the 100% bar

By on September 23, 2008 in Trips

Some 8 or 9 years ago, when I only just started chasing dark cacao bars, I was still focusing on at how much percentage the bar came. In my mind, the more cacao, the better so the hunt was open to find that 100% cacao bar.

Soon after, I spent some time in Paris and jumped into every chocolate store I ran across, and with so many chocolatiers in that beloved city, it didn’t take much time to find a 100% pure cacao bar. I don’t remember the name of the shop, but I’ll never forget that first bite:
I was actually disappointed, the taste of it was very much like putting black sand in your mouth, the cacao crawled like raw oil from tooth to tooth, and rather than tasting something, this 100% cacaobar had the effect of 7 espresso’s on me!

Loaded on this cacao energy  boost, I continued my quest and that’s when I discovered a small store from Michel Cluizel in 201, rue Saint-Honoré. I hadn’t heard of him before, but the wide range of origin bars drew my attention. And Cluizel had this very tiny bar: the “Noir Infini” at 99%, 30 grams.
This one tasted a whole lot different. You had to let the cacao do its work while keeping it long enough in your mouth, but you actually could enjoy some of the deepest cacao aromes. The bar was unsweetened, bitter, very bitter, but delivered a pleasant and powerfull tasting experience.

When these 2 tasting experiences were rather extreme, they were also very different. The most important thing I’ve learned in those days in Paris was that cacao comes with a lot of expertise, and offers many many experiments with varieties of blends, beans, roastings, percentages etc. and that it takes a lot of craftsmanship to build a well balanced dark bar.