About Chocolate

Chocolate is a sensual experience that involves all the senses when analysed properly. Much like wine, the connoisseur knows well how to fully experience this food of the gods; allow the aromas, texture, presentation, sound, and taste to sift through all the senses and you will know a chocolate.

How to Fall into Chocolate – The Five Senses

Involve all the senses Do not leave one out but instead create a full-bodied experience based on scientific analysis as well as through the vision of an artist and create for yourself the realism that breathes life through the imagination.

See: Look at the presentation, and appearance of the chocolate itself. A perfectly tempered chocolate is naturally shiny, rich in colour, though the degrees and intensity of colour may vary. Hear: Listen as you break a piece. You should hear a clear, crisp snap.

Smell: Deeply Inhale all aromas present to fully to embody the aromas and try to make distinctions of its particular notes such as acidity, fruitiness, smokiness etc…. Some chocolates are quite complex and combine different notes For example: A fruity currant entry with a smoky finish and coffee undertones with a subtle vanilla linger.

Feel: Through touch, on your fingertips, whilst on the palate feel its smooth sensations; Chocolate begins to melt the moment it reaches body temperature. Let it melt smoothly on your palate and engulf your taste buds slowly.

Savour: To Taste is to Savour; through the patience of paying attention you can develop the skill of deciphering individual notes present in a particular chocolate. Even after the chocolate has left your palate, a good chocolate will leave you satisfied with lingering notes of chocolate and its other distinctive flavours. Inhale as it is as much of your ability to taste the aromas as the flavours themselves.

Definitions -The Meaning of Chocolate

Chocolate: A food or drink made from cocoa powder.

"Candy" Chocolates vs. "Fine" Chocolate: The quality of a chocolate is dependent on many factors: the cocoa content (cocoa mass), the percentage use of cocoa butter (one of the most expensive ingredients in chocolate - as opposed to using vegetable fats, the type of beans used, the processing.

Chocolate Liquor: Though chocolate is known to induce a pleasurable sense of well being, there is no alcohol in chocolate liquor. It is produced by grinding the cocoa bean nib (center) to a smooth, liquid state and is the base for chocolate.

Cocoa Butter: The fat that extracted from the bean during a process called The naturally occurring fat in cacao beans, essential in the making of good chocolate. A bean contains approximately 50% cocoa butter .

Cacao vs. Cocoa: Cacao refers to the raw/ original state of the Cacao Pod or Cacao Bean before it has been processed into cocoa powder, cocoa butter and finally into chocolate. In general, the higher the cacao content, the more intense the chocolate flavour and the lower the amount of sugar present and the higher the health benfits associated with chocolate.

Dark Chocolate: Chocolate that contains more than 50% cocoa content. Besides chocolate liquor, it often contains added cocoa butter, sugar, vanilla, and often soy lecithin.

Baking Chocolate: A solid, bitter chocolate made from pure chocolate liquor, i.e., the cacao content is 100% with no sugar added. Historically, its only purpose was for baking. There are other brands of baking chocolate; and today, the finest chocolate manufacturers are producing an unsweetened product, called 100% cacao content chocolate, that can be eaten as well. Some people who favor bittersweet chocolate enjoy the pureness of fine chocolate made with no sugar, as do diabetics who cannot have sugar.

Blended Chocolate: A chocolate bar made of beans representing any combination of bean varieties, growing regions, and harvest years. The opposite of a blended bar is a Single Origin Bar, where all of the beans come from the same area; or a Grand Cru Bar, where all of the beans come from the same plantation or estate. Blended bars are sometimes called "house bars" because they are blended to a consistent recipe year after year to represent the house style of the producer.

Blooming: There are two kinds of bloom that form on the surface of chocolate: both are temperature-related and both make the chocolate look suspect and unappetizing. With fat bloom, the chocolate loses its gloss: a powdery grayish-white or tan film forms on the surface. This is due to improper storage, poorly tempering, lack of tempering, or changes in temperature. Heating chocolate above 70°F, as well as repetitive heating and cooling, will cause microscopic cocoa butter particles to join together, leaving particles of sugar and cocoa uncoated. The bloom is the cocoa butter that has separated and risen to the surface. In some cases the chocolate may become soft or crumbly. While bloom diminishes the appearance of the chocolate, it does not alter the taste and is not harmful. Chocolate with fat bloom can be eaten although it may taste drier. Fat bloom can be avoided by storing chocolate a constant temperature. Sugar bloom is caused by condensation, due to excessive moisture. The moisture combines with the sugar in the chocolate to create a syrup. Large sugar crystals remain on the surface of the chocolate when the moisture evaporates.

Milk Chocolate: Made from cocoa butter, dairy, sugar and vanilla (and often lecithin). It does not contain chocolate liquor, but must contain at least 33% cocao butter to be considered of good quality.

Couverture: A term used to describe high-quality chocolate – quality determined by bean quality, particle size of ground bean and amount of cocoa butter. Most confectioners agree couverture should contain at least 32% cocoa butter.

Truffles: An irregularly shaped, often oval confection of ganache, coated with chocolate, and usually finished with a cocoa powder exterior. Its shape mimics the black truffle.

Ganache: A smooth, silky mixture of chocolate, and cream, milk, butter or a combination of the three.

Varietal: The blend of beans and regions. Single Origin Chocolates:The cacao beans are sourced from a single region such as Peru, Tanzania, St. Domingue etc… This is what we mean when we say travel by chocolate – find yourself journeying through Single Origin chocolates.

Plantation Estate Chocolates: These chocolates come from a single estate/ plantation where the cacao beans are produced to create "special reserve chocolates". Again, like wine, one year could produce a an excellent crop and a chocolate is released for that particular year or, some years the plantation does not produce any bars. The goal is to extract particular flavours based on the maturity of soil, bean selection and growth. It is by design about quality, not bulk quantity and is generally more expensive than most bars.

Notes: Refer to the embodiment of layers in flavours and aromas of a chocolate.

Aromas: Most of what people perceive as "taste" actually results from their sense of smell so it is important to smell, and even inhale while eating a piece of chocolate to engage in its full experience. The human tongue has four basic taste sensations: Sweet, Sour, Bitter & Salty. All other taste is a result of the Sense of Smell. The vapours released from the product entice anticipation of the flavour they are about to taste. vapours that travel up through the retro nasal canal, past the nasal passages, until they reach the Olfactory Also, in order for food to have taste, chemicals from the food must first dissolve in saliva. Once dissolved, the chemicals can be detected by receptors on taste buds.

White Chocolate: By true chocolate connoisseur standards white chocolate is not considered chocolate at all. Though made from a blend of cocoa butter, milk, sugar, and vanilla extract, it doesn’t contain any cocoa solids (cocoa powder) the defining factor in what’s known as chocolate. But it seems that for most the confection that contains the delicacy of cocoa butter is enough to put it in the same category. A good quality white chocolate needs to contain a minimum of 32% cocoa butter content.

Bean Varietals

Criollo beans fall into the fine flavour category of bean. Criollo beans produce chocolate with much richer and more intense flavors but at the same time more subtle than the other types of beans. Criollo trees are less resistant to disease, mature later, produce for fewer years, and produce fewer pods than forastero or trinitario trees. Perhaps the most highly prized criollo variety—it is certainly one of the rarest—is Porcelana, which comes from the Spanish word for porcelain, referring to the very pale color of the flesh of the fresh bean.

CRIOLLO FAMILY: Originates from South America, mainly Venezuela. Rare and sensitive to its climate. Complex cocoa with lots of secondary flavours.

FORASTERO FAMILY: Most widely spread cocoa strain worldwide. Less sensitive to climate. Higher quality strains from Ghana, Java and Ecuador. Quality ranges from very low to complex. Sometimes bitter and astringent

TRINITARIOS FAMILY: Hybrid of the other two families, with a stronger, more full bodied flavour than Criollo. The quality can be very good and complex

The Chocolate Process

Chocolate making is a complex process and the quality of its outcome is dependent on factors from the bean source to the final stages in product production, storage and handling

Selecting Beans: Flavour profiles are harvested. Not unlike wine grapes or coffee, cocoa beans from different regions develop different flavour characteristics; floral, smoky, leather, currant, prune, jasmine etc. Each of these characteristics is taken into consideration when making a blend. The goal is to provide a consistent flavour profile from year to year given that flavour characteristics from each region may vary seasonally.

Fermentation: This process allows the flavour of the cocoa bean to develop its initial and most distinguishing characteristics. , unlike many manufacturers, uses only fermented and dried cocoa beans. At the grower level this fermentation process is a very big "extra" step, one many farmers would rather by-pass. The fermentation process is delicate and spoilage can occur if rotation of the fermenting beans is not done properly: moisture can develop leading to formation of mold. A significant amount of the cocoa used in conventional or mass-produced chocolate is derived from un-fermented cacao beans.

Roasting: s one of the few chocolate manufacturers whose cocoa beans are roasted medium dark to dark, depending on the bean type, a style similar to French Roast in the coffee industry. Unlike coffee, however, very dark roasted cocoa beans can yield unwanted acrid tastes, so the challenge is to have the beans roasted to a dark toasted level to insure maximum flavour without going over to the acidic side.

Winnowing: The separation of the tough cocoa bean shell from its inner meat is accomplished solely with forced air in order to maximize the separation and the reduction of bitter, unwanted shells. The resulting pieces are now called cacao nibs.

Initial refining: In the mill cocoa nibs are converted into a thick, dark, rich paste, now called cocoa mass. chocolate is always processed through 5 roll refiners at this stage to ensure accurate particle sizing that guarantees the delicate smoothness for which the Company is known.

Conching: The unwanted volatile flavours and acids are evaporated though a heat/milling process in large conches or vats for anywhere from 18 to 72 hours. This process creates ’s fine texture ( maintains a fineness not to exceed 28 to 30 microns, one thousandth of an inch, the equivalent of one third of a sheet of thin paper). During the conching stage, , ensuring superb melt-in-your mouth qualities that allow the flavour to be delivered throughout the pallet, adds generous amounts of cocoa butter, the most expensive ingredient in cacao. The only other ingredients added at this stage are sugar and milk powder to create milk chocolate.

Moisture: One of the mortal enemies of chocolate production is water, which is maintained below1% in the finished chocolate goods.