Welcome to our new website, which is finally here, albeit in a not totally finished format. Hopefully you’ll agree it’s a huge improvement and will bear with us while we catch up with all the technical tweaking needed to deliver the site we want, and we hope you’ll find easier to use and more appealing.

The new design is just the beginning. We still need to port the forum to the new format and a new software platform. Not only will this bring the old forum up to date, it will also let all our users loose on the rest of the site, and we look forward to blog contributions and comments from you soon. There’s a techy challenge involved though, so we’ll probably need to get Chocolate Week out of the way first. Please not that while the old forum sits and waits for its upgrade, we’re not accepting new registrations at the moment – we were just getting an uncontrollable amount of spam that the old ‘Snitz’ software just couldn’t handle.

Another big upgrade is bringing the review section – the old ‘Chocopaedia’ – into the new WordPress platform. This is not such a big job, but it’s still going to take some programming effort and data transfer. This is also going to take a little while, but we hope soon to a nice shiney new review section, along with new reviews and new reviewers, and we’ll be recruiting new volunteers in the near future as well.

Please let us know any comments or thoughts about the site, and look out for more changes and improvements hopefully appearing fast and furiously!

Tomorrow the chocolate is finally being launched at the Summer Fancy Food Show in New York, and is already available from the Amano factory store. The news about Amano’s new Chuao bar is live on their website.

Chuao, the legend

The Chuao cacao cave (also known at the production office)

Yes, that’s right, Amano have taken on one of the most famous of cacao sources, Venezuela’s Chuao. (You can read my travel blog about my 2008 visit to Chuao here). Famous as one of the most fought over of cacaos, until last year Amedei had exclusive rights to the village’s yearly production. Amedei had taken the Chuao origin to new heights; in doing so they helped to make the name internationally known as a byword for the best chocolate.

Amedei’s Chuao is a multi-award winner and is both complex and appreciated by connoisseurs, but also approachable and instantly likeable for beginners. In other words, most people agree it is a great chocolate. (At time of writing, it is still our number one rated bar.)

When Amedei’s exclusivity ended last year, a number of other chocolate makers were suddenly producing chocolate from Chuao’s cacao. The rather mixed results combined with not the best of harvests last year led to questions about Chuao’s continued reputation at the top of the cacao pecking order.

So it’s a bold move then for Amano to take on Chuao’s latest harvest as their new source. Can Amano live up to the expectations that come with Chuao, and perhaps help the source to live up to its past glories?

The making of a chocolate

I had an anxious and excited call from Art Pollard one night. His latest chocolate had recently finished conching and was now ready for tempering and moulding. Chocolate makers don’t usually call me when they have a part finished chocolate, so this must be something pretty important.

A few days later, a FedEx’ed package arrived with chocolate straight out of the conche. This was something unusual that I’d not tried before – chocolate that was finished, but had never at any time been tempered. Ripping open the package, I got to try the chocolate pretty fast. It was strangely grainy as the cocoa butter crystals had never been set.

Clark Goble and Art Pollard in the early days back in 2007

The flavour really showed promise, but under advisement from Art, I needed to melt then freeze a sample to begin to understand it. An impatient fifteen minutes later I had my first taste. There were a strong, fermented, cacao head, despite the cold temperature, then darker fruit, plum, then cream chocolate. A rather large smile came over my face. This was Chuao, and it looked like it was going to be pretty good.

A few days later I managed to get down to Paul A Young with my 200g or so sample, and a few days after that, was able to pick up a couple of nicely made, finished, bars. Back at Amano base camp, the chocolate had not actually been tempered yet, so we here in London were the first people in the world to try finished tempered and moulded Amano Chuao. An exciting moment.

Over the next few weeks there were hushed moments in private corners as I was able to give tiny samples to a small few who were sworn to secrecy. The reaction was always good and always excited, even among complete non-chocolate heads.

Then finally about a week ago, came another call from Art, followed a few days later by another FedEx package containing  fully finished – but unboxed – Amano Chuao bars.

The result was almost an anti climax. I’d been on my crazy no-chocolate diet, and perhaps my palate wasn’t quite were it should have been. That initial cacao hit and three stage roller coaster of a flavour journey was not quite so pronounced. The dark plum fruit had veered towards grapefruit. Perhaps the two day long English summer wasn’t helping.

I spoke to Art and my reaction was “well, this is good, but not quite as exciting as when I tried that first sample. Maybe it needs to settle a little”. The flavours of a chocolate often change and develop during the first few weeks after it’s made. It’s widely known that Amedei’s Chuao is left to sit for three weeks before moulding, so it seemed likely that the same would apply to Amano’s version.

Amano Chuao

A week on and a few days before the official release of Amano’s Chuao, it’s now perhaps a better time to make a first assessment of Amano’s work. Thankfully, the exciting flavour evolution was back, and with a happy ending.

The Chuao church by Diane Whitehead, from the Amano Chuao bar box

Take a piece of Amano’s Chuao and smell it and it is at once familiar. Side by side with Amedei, this is clearly the same source, though the Amano roast is clearly lighter.

I’ve given this chocolate to a few people now, and everyone goes through the same journey. At first we get mild chocolate. The chocolate seems good, well made, with mild flavour and we perhaps don’t expect much else to happen.

About 5-10 seconds in though something really interesting starts to develop. The flavour becomes a little ‘green’ – fresh, with a hint of fermentation. To me it tastes exactly like cacao eaten off the ground while drying. There’s no vinegar and it’s not too tart, but just enough to give a thrill. You feel like you could be in Chuao. This lasts about fifteen seconds.

Then comes the fruit – classic Chuao plum, marmalade, some background liquorice, green olives, the tiniest hint of Chuao toffee – pleasantly sweet and very palatable. (You can also detect these at the start, once you know there are there).

Then we get cream, cream toffee – a chocolate cream that’s typical of Venezuelan criollo, and perhaps in Chuao comes through at this point, late in the mouth, along with hazelnut praline. (Chuao is a mix of probably over thirty varieties, forateros and triniatios – some of which will have more criollo genetics).

The length is gently tannic, combining with the cream and the fruit to create a fruit salad and chocolate pudding effect, perhaps with a green tea on the side. It holds up really well.

So, did Amano’s work stand up? Well this is certainly one of the best Chuao interpretations I’ve tried. It’s not too bold or over-roasted, not at all flat, the full fruit flavour is there and you’re taken on a fantastic chocolate journey with each piece. Yet this is still a very accessible chocolate.

Chuao is a deep, complex source, and different maker’s bars will each have their own appeal and we may all have our own favourites. Amano Chuao certainly hit the spot for me, and as a company they only seem to keep improving.

Personally, some chocolate just makes me really happy inside when I try it.   In this case, the big smile was back.

Info

Amano Chuao available from the Amano factory store in Utah, Caputo’s Deli in Salt Lake City. Hopefully to hit shelves in the UK soon!

www.amanochocolate.com

I finally took the plunge last week, with a last minute booking to Milano and a flight back from Firenze (Florence). This gave me the chance to visit just a few of the Tuscan valley’s famous chocolate destinations.

After a night on the outskirts of Milan visiting Jorge Felix of World Foods, I took the fast EuroStar train to Florence, which cuts nearly two hours off the slow train route. Arriving early evening, I settled into my hotel (overlooking the medieval bridge at the centre of the town, Ponte Vecchio), then met up with Monica and friend for the first of a some fantastic Tuscan food.

I could write another whole blog about the food – beautiful pasta, bread, oil, corn cakes – and the great wine and coffee. I’ll try to confine myself to the chocolate though.

Skipping breakfast in favour of chocolate, in the morning we set off in search of the best of Florence’s chocolate.

Andrea Bianchini

An award winning pastry chef, Andrea opened his two ‘La Bottega del Cioccolato’ stores about six years ago. He’s since become one of the leading Italian chocolatiers, winning the highest accolades and being named ‘best chocolatier’ in Italy for 2009.

Andrea Bianchini in la bottega del cioccolato

Andrea uses couverture from Valrhona, Domori and Felchlin, creating his own blends for different products. This seems to be the case with many Italian chocolatiers, as I discovered. Very few seemed to feature a single, individual couverture or origin for a particular bonbon or ganache.

The shop was small, yet stylish, with ganaches in the French style and beautifully made cakes. Andrea is very enthusiastic about his ingredients and it was clear every flavouring ingredient was chosen with care and for a reason.

Chefs at work at La Bottega del Cioccolato

His personal favourite is ‘cocco e rhum agricol’ made with rum from Martinique and just enough coconut to add texture to a semi-liquid ganache, without adding too dominant a flavour.

La Bottega del Cioccolato is not just about chocolates though. What started as the recreation of a childhood memory of American cookies as a summer filler has turned into a regular part of the shop’s trade. Andrea now has a range of five different cookies, all using chocolate in some way.

Biscotti by Andrea Bianchini

My personal favourites were ‘Sablé al mais’ – made with corn/maize and the absolutely divine ‘Cookies’ con pezzi di cioccolato’. The aftertaste of these was long, buttery and just amazing. I brought back a large bag.

A visit to one of Andrea Bianchini’s stores is an absolute must if you visit Florence.

Info

Andrea Bianchini
La Bottega del Cioccolato
Via de Macci, 50
50122 Firenze,
Italy
Tel: +33 55 2001609

Rivoire Pasticceria

Rivoire have been serving patisserie and chocolates made in their own kitchens since the 1870′s. It’s the kind of traditional, tourist friendly place you’d find in most European city squares. In many cafe restaurants of this type, there’s a sense of history, but often the patisserie and chocolates are bought in as economics take precedence over quality. This is not the case at Rivoire though.

Rivoire's chocolatier staff with the roll refiner

Only fifteen years ago, Rivoire still made their own chocolate from the bean. City regulations put a stop to this though. Rivoire still have their old roll refiner though and a blender conche with static wheels though. They use these to finish refining cacao mass – finished, unconched 100% chocolate.

Marco Bianchi conching and mixing sugar in the Rivoire kitchen

Rivoire buy cacao mass from Icam – cost limitations prevent using anything higher end, but at least they can stamp their own character on the chocolate and create their own blends. So some tradition survives and this is streets ahead of anything that would happen in a similar establishment in the UK.

Marco Bianchi, Rivoire’s chocolatier, did tell us though that he has been experimenting with cacao mass from Domori, so we look forward to some interesting results from this.

I only had time to try a few samples of chocolate and grab a cappuccino, but for a commercial, tourist serving, mainstream location, Rivoire do a pretty good job and are well worth a visit.

Info

Piazza della Signoria angolo Via Vacchereccia, 4R
Firenze
Tel. +39055214412
www.rivoire.it

Paul de Bondt

Our day ended by taking a train almost all the way to Pisa, a stop or so short at Navacchio. Here Paul de Bondt and Cecilia Iacobelli have their factory (and a small factory shop), and it’s here that they combine around fifty different sources of chocolate to create their own range of blends.

Well known chocolates or 100% mass from the big names are combined with more obscure sources, creating a range of flavour profiles and textures. These are matched to compliment specific flavouring ingredients; most chocolatiers use one or two courvertures for all their products.

De Bondt have hundreds of options from which they can choose the perfect chocolate for a particular flavour. This takes a lot of time and real dedication, and a real passion for experimentation. De Bondt seem a mixture of slightly mad-scientist and innovative presentation, which could well reflect the characters of Paul and Cecilia!

A few products from Paul de Bondt's range

De Bondt first opened their shop in Pisa in 1993. They’ve been winning awards ever since, opening their ‘laboratory’ in 2005 and moving to a new store in 2006.

Info

De Bondt Cioccolato e Affini‎
Lungarno Pacinotti, 5
56126 Pisa, Italy
Tel +33 (0)50 316 0073
www.debondt.it

Luca Mannori

Luca Mannori prepares samples for tasting

Only time for one chocolatier on my last day. This did though include breakfast and tasting in a patisserie, a factory visit and lunch, all in various establishments owned by Luca Mannori.

I made a point of skipping breakfast in my hotel again, and this turned out to be a good move given what was waiting for us at the Via Lazzerini pastry store.

As appetisers (yes, really), we were given mini chocolate cupcakes and mini chocolate éclairs with a chocolate cream filling.

The éclairs were pure heaven.

Next came croissant and cappuccino (so good I had two), then a sampling of other pastries, like a custard and rice filled crispy flat pastry – yum.

After a taste of a couple of mini cakes (ok, serious diet due when I get home), Luca brought out a selection of ganaches for us to try.

In common it seems with many Italian chocolatiers, Mannori like to create their own house blends, using in this case finished chocolate from a number of sources, dominated by Valrhona.

Ganaches ranged from Long Jing tea to single malt whisky, ‘mix of peppers’ to the three layered gianduja cremino, which being Italian, was especially good.

A much needed break took us off for a tour of Mannori’s impressive production facility. This was a large space, with cooling tunnels, cold stores, work spaces and packing facilities.

Cakes on display in the Luca Mannori pastry shop

I’ve seen bean to bar chocolate factories that are smaller, and this entire space is almost entirely devoted to supplying the two shops and Mannori’s restaurant.

It gives you an idea of how much quality chocolate the Italians like to consume.

The chocolate counter at Mannori restaurant

After the factory, it was off to the Mannori restaurant next for lunch, and my final indulgence of the trip.

Following a starter of roasted vegetables and on a light, circular bread made in a pannetonne mould, I took the home made gelato for my main course. Things really were beginning to go too far.

Luca Mannori and wife, with restaurant team. Monica Meschini in front

Leaving Florence, I stocked up on olive oil at the airport and went home with a fresh pannetonne from Luca Mannori as an extra passenger (which when shared back in London was universally agreed to be the best anyone had tasted.)

Info

Mannori Pastry
Via Lazzerini, 2
59100 Prato (PO)
Italy
Tel: +39 (0)574 21628
www.mannoriespace.it

See website for details of the ‘Espace’ chocolate shop.

I don’t really need to sing the praises of Florence as a place to visit, but I hope I’ve inspired a few trips to some of the regions better chocolate establishments. Of course there are many names missing – two nights is hardly enough. I feel it is my duty then to return very soon and eat even more chocolate. After the diet that is.

We had held the first of our new format taste experience workshops last month. The workshops follow a fairly set structure, with more emphasis on how to taste rather than what. So our new advanced format was a chance to let our hair down a little and pull the new, odd and unusual out of the chocolate cupboard.

Chocolate carnage with Louise Thomas, Dom Ramsey and Jennifer Earle

The idea of these sessions is a more social and informal feel, with a mixed audience of invited faces from the London chocolate scene and members of the chocolate tasting public.

We receive a lot of samples at Seventypercent.com. There are so many new artisanal chocolate makers springing up around the world, and so many new projects and origins, it’s sometimes hard to keep up. So it was great to get some of these out and try them as a group.

Some of the topics we covered this session were:

Amedei comparison – Cru squares (a slightly older batch) compared to the new 50g bars. We tried Jamaica. The newer bars probably had more flavour, but seemed to use more cocoa butter in the recipe, while the squares probably came off better overall. It was a close thing.

US Artisans – we tried samples from some of the new US artisans producing chocolate on a small scale, including Olive and Sinclair, Cacao Atlanta and Fresco. Trying Fresco Jamaica right after Amedei was interesting, and we could see the similarities in the bean source.
The Fresco wasn’t quite up to Amedei standards, but this wasn’t really a surprise as these are ‘prototype’ bars. We tried 205 medium conche and 206 long conche. Opinions were mixed. Some found them too tannic, while a few others in the group found them quite palatable.
Overall, Olive and Sinclair probably came off best – though quite an ordinary bean source, the salt and salt and pepper bars were quite munchable. The Cacao Atlanta Dominican Republic bars on the other hand were found to be way too bitter and strong. 75% was just too high a percentage for those beans.

Green & Black’s 70% – has it improved? This might sound like a surprise inclusion for a fine chocolate session, but Steve and I had noticed some potential improvements in this Cadbury/Kraft owned brand at our last workshop. The group generally agreed. Gone was the gritty earthiness, replaced by a fairly smooth almond creaminess. Not spectacular, but a huge improvement on the previous barely edible version. We wondered where it is now being made? Is it still Icam in Italy and just a change of recipe, or are rumours of production moving to a Callebaut factory in Poland true. (The back of the bar wrapper now says ‘Made in the EU’ rather than ‘Made in Italy.)

Madagascar – Jennifer Earle of Chocolate Ecstasy Tours came along to the event, having just got back from a plantation and factory visit to Madagascar. Jennifer gave us a quick talk about her experiences and we also got to try various bars made in Madagascar and in consumer countries. Madécasse had sent me some bars to try, while Jennifer had brought back some identical bars under a local brand. We tried both these at various percentages, which had the typical Madagascan sourness and were pretty good.
There are two chocolate factories in Madagascar, the one that makes Madécasse and the one that made ‘Malagasy’ chocolate and local brand Robert, which Jennifer also brought, but really wasn’t up to much.
Jennifer also told us that there are only two main plantations in Madagascar – Willow and Akkensons, plus Pralus’ plantation on the northern island of Nosy Be. There are also various independent farmers around the island. This makes things interesting, because many of the upper end or small scale artisan chocolate makers are often working with almost identical beans. This gives a real chance to compare the different styles and approaches of different chocolate makers.

Amano Madagascar batches – carrying on the Madagascan theme, I’d happened to try an older batch of Amano Madagascar the other day – a bar from the 2009 Academy of Chocolate Gold Award winning batch. This was a great all round chocolate, but personally I found it the least interesting of Amano’s bars.
The most recent bar batch though is completely another matter, even though made with the same bean batch. Delicate, fruity and light, it’s almost like a strawberry ice cream speckled with raisins and drenched in honey. If all of Amano’s bars keep improving in this way, they’re going to be a real force to look out for in the fine chocolate world.

Tobago Cocoa – Swedish resident and rum expert Duane Dove had contacted me about his Tobago Cocoa project and also sent a sample of his new chocolate, made in partnership with Pralus. The bar came in rather elegant packaging, so I’d been loathe to open it without proper photography and the right occasion. This finally seemed the time to get the bar out and give it a taste in good company.
Opinions were divided about the chocolate. Some of us around the table really liked it, but a few others – including myself – found it a little underdeveloped, though quite edible. We can’t be too critical though – this was the very first Tobago Cocoa harvest. It can take time to get the right fermentation for a cacao and the right recipe for a new chocolate. I look forward to the next batch and more development.

Show and tell Another feature of these events is the chance to bring along chocolate for the group to try. As well as the various Madagascan offerings brought along by Jennifer Earle, Louise Thomas had brought along some offerings from Melt and Dom Ramsey of Chocablog contributed a Hotel Chocolat Madagascar bar. (Check out Dom’s Chocablog posting about the night here.)

Thanks also to Kate Johns of Chocolate Week and Seventypercent regular review and tasting brain box Alex Rast, who contributed plenty to the event despite having a cold.

All in all a very enjoyable evening that we’ll repeat again in the autumn, though apologies to our public attendees if it was all just too nerdy! We’ll try for a bit more structure next time.

Steel drum music at the opening of the new Rabot Estate shop

I was expecting something flash and out of place. Perhaps a commercial sector variation on the Hotel Chocolat branding that might have marked the beginning of the ‘Spitalfieldisation‘ of Borough Market. Instead, the new store has something of a Caribbean street food feel, with plenty of exposed brickwork, recovered timber and corrugated metal.

The store opens directly onto Stoney Street and a steel band (well, band of two) greeted the guests on this first official day of the new shop. This ‘open’ day featured plenty of free sampling of Rabot chocolate, chocolate tapas and desserts and cocoa tea.

Angus Thirwell speaking at the ribbon cutting ceremony

Rabot Estate bars

On sale at the store are Rabot themed bars, including Rabot Estate, St Lucia and other country origin chocolate bars – all made for Hotel Chocolat by their chocolate maker partners in Germany, Coppenneur.

The most successful of these was the new 120 hour conched ‘Island Growers’ 65% dark. This has full yellow fruit and honey notes, with a slight tobacco hint and a clean after taste – certainly the best St Lucia so far to come our of the Hotel Chocolate/Coppenneur partnership.  The 65% also worked pretty well in bars with whole Piedmont hazelnuts.

Hotel Chocolat founder Angus Thirwell told me that the equivalent recipe for the single plantation Rabot Estate bar was not quite ready for public consumption yet, but would be available soon.

Single source means seasonal variation, so recipes often need to be perfected for each batch.

Dash of milk

Instead the Rabot beans pop up in the new ‘Dash of Milk’ range – strong milk bars that are not pretending to be a conventional milk chocolate, but feature milk powder in place of sugar to take some edge off.

So in fact, the 70% ‘Dash of Milk’ is only 10% sugar. The lack of sweetness takes some getting used to, but the milky hit at the end takes the edge off.

For the more feint-hearted, the 50% ‘dash’ with 20% milk powder and 30% sugar comes in 150g packs with cacao nibs, though I did find this combination a little ‘meaty’ in flavour.

Sampling chocolate treats on the opening day

As well as Rabot coated nibs and flavoured bars in simple, artisan style packaging, the store includes a selection of the regular Hotel Chocolat range – there aren’t quite enough Rabot products to fill up a whole shop yet, and they’ll probably always be some room here for the shinier Hotel Chocolat gift products. (These are made in Hotel Chocolat’s own factory in Huntingdon, England, using Callebaut chocolate.)

The shop also features a food bar serving cocoa tea (optionally with a shot of St Lucian rum – should I really have tried that at 11am in the morning?) and a selection of sweet and and savoury dishes using St Lucia chocolate.

All in all a pleasant surprise and an impressive new addition to the London chocolate scene, adding a different take to our growing selection of chocolate shops.

Info

Rabot Estate
2 Stoney Street
Borough Market
London
SE1 9AA

Tel: +44 (0)20 7403 9852

www: www.rabotestate.com

Opening Hours: Monday – Saturday, 07.00 – 18.00

In the programme Panorama reporter Paul Kenyon investigated the use of child slave labour in cocoa farming while raising some questions about Fair Trade.

Thankfully, Panorama has not succumbed too much to the modern TV disease of ‘reality’, so the programme was both quite watchable and informative. (Other bastions of BBC documentary strands, such as my once beloved ‘Horizon‘ have become totally dumbed down and unviewable.)

If you’ve read ‘Bitter Chocolate‘ by Carol Off, the state of cacao farming in Ivory Coast and the forced ‘migration’ of children from Burkina Faso to be used as unpaid labour will not come as a surprise. (You can listen to an interview with Carol Off about her book here.)

Panorama covered a lot of the same ground, but did include a lighter touch with it’s ‘made with child labour label’ logo chocolate bar.

The right target?

Ivory Coast (Cote d’Ivoire) is pretty much run by the big cocoa processors – ADM, Cargill, Callebaut, etc. The nature of commodity crops tends to make them corruptible, so it’s no surprise that the country that provides 50% of the world’s cocoa might have some issues.

Ghana has a much better track record. It’s more stable politically, has a good reputation for the treatment of it’s cocoa (if not the genetics) and in Kuapa Kokoo one of the most famous and reputable Fair Trade cooperatives.

While I’m sure that no cooperative will be perfect, Kuapa Kokoo was a bit too much of an easy target – because of its visibility. Apart from the admitted problems and suspension of some farmers, the cooperative came out fairly well. This didn’t exactly feel like the sharpest of journalism. Even when more ex-child labourers were found, this was a result of Kuapa Kokoo’s own investigations.

The Ivory Coast Fair Trade schemes were another matter, and I would have like to have seen the programme spend a lot more time here, especially given the complete and apparently uncooperative denial of any problems from the likes of Nestlé. Investigative journalism is not so easy in Ivory Coast though, as the disappearance of French-Canadian journalist Guy-André Kieffer illustrates.

Apart from Kuapa Kokoo, Fair Trade cocoa is fairly new to Africa. Most of the cacao used in the Fair Trade bars that have sprung up over the last ten years has come not from Africa, but from the South America and Caribbean countries like the Dominican Republic.

In the fine chocolate and cacao worlds there are many stories and rumours about wheeling and dealing, bad deals and corruption in Fair Trade, or whether the scheme is appropriate for the premium end of the cocoa market. Some time spent checking out the voracity of these rumours in Latin America would have been really useful.

The cocoa trader

We heard from a cocoa commodity market trader. This was very telling. The trader was quite happy to admit that he had no interest in quality of the cocoa or how it was harvested. Well, that explains why most chocolate doesn’t taste very good then.

More shocking was the blunt admission that although he cared ‘personally’ whether child labour was involved in the production of the cocoa he was trading, he told us it ‘doesn’t matter’ from a business point of view. We’d have to ask – if the trader really did care personally – whether he was in the wrong job.

The problems with the cocoa commodity market were pretty much summed up here – banks of monitors with disconnected figures while a trader makes gambles that bring his company profit, condemning cocoa farmers to lives of poverty. Ok, it’s not all his personal fault, but this is symptomatic of how the cocoa trade functions.

It was good to see the Harkin-Engel protocol covered (a failed Washington initiative to label candy bars ‘child slave labor free’), though this will be old news to readers of Steve Chung’s ‘Hot Chocolate’ column from our old Chocolate Connoisseurs Club newsletter.

Making chocolate

The programme did rather commit a disservice to actual, bean-to-bar chocolate makers by misrepresenting the chocolate making process.

It was great to see Marc Demarquette get some airtime in the programme. All due respect to Marc though, he is NOT one of the UK’s most respected ‘chocolate makers’ as we were told in the introduction. (Nor is he pretending to be ). He is in fact one of the UK’s most respected chocolatiers (an artisan who buys high end chocolate and makes fresh bonbons and ganaches.)

Chocolate making, while simple in principle, is a complex and marginally economically viable process – especially at the fine end of the spectrum. I guess I say this at almost every turn, but there are currently only three companies that I know of making chocolate directly from the bean in the UK. They are: Cadbury Kraft, Willie Harcourt-Cooze’s Delectable and Duffy Sheardown’s Red Star Chocolate.

In fact it was Duffy who roasted (and I assume winnowed and nibbed) the cocoa used by the programme. Marc told me that he further cleaned the beans, then created a fine powder that was ground into a liquor. This was then mixed with cocoa butter, sugar, dried milk power and conched in a small granite conch for 51 hours. Marc describes this as “a very rough process which had achieved a respectable result”.

The recipe mimicked mass-market confectionery chocolate, but didn’t use any vegetable fat. As Paul Kenyon told us ‘this is chocolate as we know chocolate to be’. Well, if you mean the newsagent kind.

I know it wasn’t the point of the programme, but we didn’t really see how chocolate was made, especially the very important aspects of bean handling and treatment and most crucial of all, roasting.

The whole ‘made with child labour label’ gag was pretty good though – the chocolate Marc made was moulded and wrapped up in bars with a ‘made with child labour’ logo proudly displayed on the front. Members of the public were interviewed on the street as to whether they’d buy these bars or not. Of course the answer is ‘no’, which just shows how people might react if they were more aware of problems in the cacao production chain. (Or am I being optimistic here?)

Factual errors

Where cacao grows

A basic error came in the first few minutes of the show – we’re told that cacao grows in conditions ‘found only in a narrow belt of jungle just ten degrees either side of the equator’. I’ve never seen that figure quoted anywhere in any chocolate reference – the tropical 20 degrees being more common.

Ten degrees of latitude either side of the equator excludes both Madagascar – an African country famous for it’s quality cacao, and the regions where the Aztecs and Maya grew their cacao. Thus contradicting the statement made a few scenes earlier, when we were told that cacao originated in Central America. (It didn’t – recent genetic research confirmed the Upper Amazon region as the origin. Chocolate, however, is a Central American invention.)

The ‘chocolate earth’ graphic running under this part of the programme was a little more accurate, but still managed to miss out the Dominican Republic.

Next we’re told that ‘cocoa pods ripen quickly in the heat of the sun’. It takes a cacao pod about 5-6 months to mature. Is that ‘quickly’?

The first Fair Trade chocolate bar

Another error later on – we’re told that only 1 in 10 chocolate bars in the UK carry the Fair Trade logo and that ‘the first to do so was Divine chocolate, back in the later 90s’. The UK Fair Trade website begs to differ. Green & Black’s Maya Gold was the first ever certified Fair Trade product in 1994.

Maya Gold is a product still very popular today with a loyal following. (Though not without it’s own issues, and is dumbed down from it’s original 70% to the current 55%. If G&B’s PR department happen to be reading this, please check with your founder, Craig Sams before contacting me to tell me otherwise!)

Some of that loyal following might be Panorama viewers. Some of them might even remember buying Maya Gold before the name ‘Divine’ had ever been heard of in the chocolate world. Just how hard is it to research this stuff?

All this might seem like nitpicking. The worry is though that if some of these basics are wrong, just how far can we trust the research for the rest of the programme?

Transparency

The final point of the programme is about transparency and tracibility, and here I’m in absolute agreement that this is the way forward for ‘ethically sound’ cacao and chocolate. Fair Trade might be part of the answer, but it is not the whole answer.

The only way we can truly trust our food is to understand where it came from and how it was produced. For foods made from commodities grown in other continents, this is particularly pertinent.

Luckily, there is a virtuous circle that exists in the production of the highest quality chocolate. You can only make really good chocolate if the source cacao is of the right kind and well cared for. That only happens when farmers are paid a decent amount for their cacao, and it also only happens when the sources are known and very specific.

This of course makes chocolate more expensive (about three times as much is my guess). The good news though is that we don’t need to eat as much if chocolate tasted better (less than a third?), and we don’t get addicted to a sugar rush. So we get better flavour, more pleasure and all the health benefits without the downsides and farmers get a higher price for their cacao.

Doesn’t that sound like fairer trade?

As well as chocolate, Duffy and I share another interest – Formula 1. Though when I say ‘share an interest’, I mean in my case watching F1 on the telly from the sofa, and in Duffy’s case, spending most of his career working in the motor racing industry.

Given that rather unfair advantage for Duffy, it probably wasn’t the best idea of mine to take up Duffy’s F1 choc bar challenge.

From an email from Duffy:

“I have been reading all the so-called motor-racing experts trying to predict the season and realised that they have absolutely no idea what will happen. The best they can come up with is that Ferrari, McLaren, Red Bull and possibly Mercedes will be near the top and that Virgin, Lotus and HRT won’t.

So I figured we might enjoy a little bet. On a race-by-race basis we each pick a driver and if my pick beats your pick you owe me a bar of chocolate. Yours beats mine and I owe you a bar. We can settle up at season end. We alternate first picks so you can go first…

You have until Sunday morning to accept this challenge but be warned – with the regulation changes good qualifying pace is unlikely to completely translate to good race pace…”

So, I’ve foolishly agreed to the bet, and am now stocking up 19 chocolate bars to hand over at the end of the season, but hoping I might get lucky and end up with a few Red Star Chocolate bars as well.

We’ll be recording our picks in comments to this post, and you’re all welcome to join in, though I’m not taking on any more chocolate bar bets though – not sure I can afford to take on any more losses.

Results so far

Bahrain, 14 March 2010:
Race winner: Fernando Alonso
Duffy’s call: Alonso
Martin’s call: Vettel
Result: Reliability issues hamper Vettel and Alonso wins it.
Score: 1-0 to Duffy

Australia, 28 March 2010:
Race winner: Jenson Button
Duffy’s call: Vettel
Martin’s call: Mark Webber
Result: Vettel slides off and is beaten by Webber’s disappointing 9th.
Score: 1-1

Malaysia, 4 April 2010:
Race winner: Sebastian Vettel
Duffy’s call: Nico Rosberg
Martin’s call: Vettel (after a stewards enquiry!)
Result: Vettel finally gets a win, in ultra-cool style.
Score: 2-1 to Martin

China, 18 April 2010:
Race winner: Jenson Button
Duffy’s call: Fernando Alonso
Martin’s call: Lewis Hamilton
Result: Alonso’s jump start and Lewis’s skill through the pack give it to Hamilton
Score: 3-1 to Martin

Spain, 9 May 2010:
Race winner: Mark Webber
Duffy’s call: Mark Webber
Martin’s call: Vettel
Result:  Webber untouchable after Vettel fails to overtake at the start.
Score: 3-1 to Martin

Duffy Sheardown monitors his chocolate refiner

Red Star chocolate

Today Kate Johns (of Chocolate Week and Nudge PR) and I made our way up to the North East of England, to Cleethorpes. This traditional English seaside town is the unlikely home of the UK’s second bean to bar fine chocolate maker, Red Star Chocolate.

Despite the impression some British chocolate companies like to give, until very recently no one in the UK was making fine chocolate directly from cacao. In fact, probably Cadburys were the only company in Britain making any kind of chocolate from the bean.

That all changed when Willie Harcourt-Cooze came along, in a big TV media splash launching ‘Willie’s Delectable’ chocolate and finally putting Britain on the fine chocolate maker’s map.

Willie is now joined by another new artisanal chocolate maker, Duffy Sheardown. Duffy has just made his first batch of commercial chocolate, using beans from Calceta, Ecuador. These were provided by Jorge Felix and his Italian based World Foods company. Calceta is Jorge’s ancestral town in Manabi province, Ecuador and home to some of the finest cacao I’ve tasted in Ecuador. (I was lucky enough to visit with Jorge during a visit to Ecuador last June.)

Racing formula

Duffy was first inspired to start making chocolate a few years ago, when he heard that “Cadburys was the only company in the UK making chocolate from beans”. Duffy’s background is in motor racing, but that sounded like a challenge he couldn’t resist, and he began to wonder exactly how hard it would be to make your own chocolate.

Adding sugar slowly controls the temperature

A few years later and the result is a modest and inexpensive setup in a small industrial unit in Cleethorpes. Here Duffy has proved that making chocolate is both easy in principle, and difficult in the detail.

From the samples we’ve tasted though, Duffy has shown it’s possible to make a pretty good quality of chocolate without building a million dollar factory.

On the other hand, as Duffy tells us, while there’s plenty of help out there for the budding chocolate maker, some things you just have to work out for yourself, such exactly what is the best temperature to conche at.

Chocolate making is a progressive art. The best producers are constantly trying to improve their quality, tweaking recipes and adapting their machinery. It’s early days for Duffy, but he takes an approach he picked up from his motor sports days – change only one thing at a time, then if the result is an improvement (or negative), you know what made the difference.

Duffy’s chocolate making equipment may not exactly be high end, but he is making good use of the most important tool available to any chocolate maker – taste. For example, his approach to roasting – keep tasting the cacao every few minutes until it stops tasting better.

Too many chocolate makers get lost in technical details and sophisticated quality control tests and expensive equipment, while ignoring basics, like how the cacao or chocolate tastes at every stage of production. Without this kind of approach, the results are rarely good.

Sources

Duffy with Calceta cacao bags

As ever, there’s a simple message in Duffy’s cacao sources, common to good chocolate makers and chefs alike – choice of ingredients.

If you start with good ingredients and treat them with respect, you will usually have a good result.

As well as Jorge Felix’s single origin Calceta from Ecuador, Duffy is experimenting with cacao from Brazil and Panama, and also finishing liquor from a number of other sources, including Madagascar, which from what we tasted turned into a pretty good chocolate.

We tried all of these in various percentages in both dark and milk. As these were test batches, the results were mixed, but a few really stood out, like the Madagascar milk.

While we were at Duffy’s factory, he was finishing some Peruvian liquor into chocolate, and from the sample we tried off the refiner, this could turn into a pretty good chocolate too.

Local chocolate

Duffy is very much about making chocolate for his local market, aiming at local retailers and local shows and fairs as his company gets going.

Perhaps here he could be the harbinger of a new trend – for local, micro-brewery type chocolate makers.

It was be easy to imagine that in a few years time the UK would have a handful of small chocolate makers spread around the country, all with some national presence but grounded in their local economy.

Red Star's Indian made refiner/conche

This is a model that seems to be taking hold in the US and just starting in Italy.

There’s no doubt though that if Duffy can keep going in the right direction and maintain his flavour based approach, you could well be seeing his chocolate on sale in high end chocolate emporiums and national outlets soon.

It’s very likely that the first, commercial, eating chocolate bar was a British invention, made first by Fry’s then Cadburys.

It’s been a long wait, but we finally have another two independent chocolate makers in the UK, this time working with fine beans from around the world.

Red Star Chocolate is a very welcome addition to the fine chocolate world.

As usual with most BBC programmes featuring fine chocolate, my hopes of something informative are dashed. The BBC have a misinformed policy of not naming brands in their programmes. (Unless the company is larger enough to turn their products into ‘news’, so Cadburys Creme Eggs are ok to feature in the main evening news, apparently).

This policy is understandable if we’re talking Coke or Nike or Kellogs. It doesn’t make much sense for fine chocolate though. In fact, it completely blurs the message and in this case, the point of the programme.

Take the mousse, the first recipe. Only three ingredients are needed – chocolate, sugar, eggs. Blanc tells us “It is actually the quality of the chocolate that is very, very important … if you have a great chocolate, you have a great chocolate mousse.” I absolutely agree, the difference is enormous.

Does choice of ingredients matter?

Do we get to find out what the chocolate Blanc is using is? No, of course not. (Though the sharp-eyed will have spotted ‘Valrhona’ on some of the blocks – which most of the time are childishly turned upside-down.) Raymond Blanc is clearly a Valrhona man, but we’d never find that out without recognising the chocolate or being very canny with our pause buttons.

Do we get any clue what makes the quality of chocolate or how to choose it? No, of course not. Couldn’t we have at least been told it was French?

If we were being shown a matching wine to go with the mousse, we’d be told the region, vinyard, vintage. Here, nothing. We just get the extremely patronising “There are hundreds of varieties of chocolate on the market, and for Raymond, 100% dark chocolate is irresistible”. Is it? Any 100%? Paste chocolate, as Valrhona would call it, has to be pretty good to be eaten at 100%. Manjari can just about do it. That’s not true of many others.

I feel sorry for Raymond giving his staff Dairy Milk. If you can’t win people over with Manjari 64%, then you’re definitely doing something wrong. Or was that ‘reality’ editing?

We get to the Delice. “For this, Raymond’s using a dark chocolate with seventy per cent cocoa solids” we’re told in the sexiest drama-doc voice possible, as if this is somehow a sign of quality or is going to give viewers any idea of how to create this recipe. Percentage is not a sign of quality in chocolate. (For those who do want to know, the chocolate he used is almost certainly Valrhona Guanaja.)

Brands matter

Fine chocolate IS about the brands, and it’s about the artisans behind those brands. It’s not about random bulk packaged chocolate bought from supermarkets. The taste is completely different.

So a whole programme of chocolate recipes from a great chef, with no hint at all allowed about how to choose the prime ingredient.

We’re told all the time how easy these recipes are. Well, maybe, but they’re sure not going to taste very good if you’ve just popped down to Lidl and spent £0.89p on on 100gs of unbranded 70% ‘dark’ chocolate.

By the end we’re at William Curley’s Richmond shop – great of course to see Raymond and William together. Knowing William, I am pretty sure he will have talked about the quality of chocolate he uses. (William exclusively uses Amedei). Obviously this is edited out.

We have a nice time in William’s kitchen, but no mention at all of ingredient quality, no mention of freshness. These are key to the modern chocolatier, choice of chocolate is king. No clue at all why William is one of the UKs best. Doing it ‘by hand’ is apparently enough according this programme.

It was good to see Blanc in action, but all we got was chocolate fudge.

I would like to be reassured by the BBC that next time I watch a wine programme, they’ll be no mention of the names of any vinyards or companies, no matter how prestigious. Or perhaps we could have a more grown up policy about fine chocolate?

The really good news though, is it looks like Amedei have finally listened to fans of their origin chocolate and are bringing out their Cru range in the 50g bar format. The six country origins have previously only been available as 5g tasting squares in selection boxes of 12 or 36, or single varieties mini-boxes of four. These were never widely available though, leaving Amedei’s country origin range little known – at least in the UK.

More on the ‘Cru’ origin bars when we get to try them, in the meantime though, we received some of Amedei’s new products along with our Chocolate Week samples. These included ‘Quadrotti Toscani’ – filled mini-bars with a range of praline based flavours, and ‘Crema Toscana alla Nocciola’ – hazelnut and chocolate cream spread in a jar.

Quadrotti Toscani

Amedei's new Quadrotti Toscani range

In the fine chocolate world, Amedei are best know for their solid chocolate, winning awards and plaudits for their bean to bar production. Just as important to the company though is their praline range, which was actually the original inspiration for the formation of the company, back in the late 1980s.

Up to now though, filled Amedei products have been limited to traditional pralines, available in collection boxes, but now Amedei have launched a new range of praline filled bars, in a handy four-square 45g size.

The milk coated gianduja bar features ‘Crema Toscana’ (more on this later) and a slight crunch from ground roast hazelnuts. Very smooth, light, delicately flavoured. Rather sweet of course, but enough flavour and substance to create a really fulfilling combination.

Milk chocolate coated croccantino is very sweet, but there’s nothing wrong with sweetness done well, when taken in moderation. The sweet bite with added crunch lingers on the tongue well. This isn’t exactly the heights of Amedei’s ’9′ 75%, but length is always the best indicator of quality, and this hangs on really well.

Normally I might be dismissive of white chocolate with a pistachio filling, but the reputation of Amedei’s ‘I Frutti’ solid white chocolate with roasted pistachio bar precedes this new bar. When fresh, this solid bar has a fantastic roast pistachio flavour – not surprising, as I understand that Amedei roast their own nuts. The new filled praline version gives off a similar aroma, along with of course a strong aroma of the milk. In some ways, this seems less sweet than the milk offerings, and a slight crunch adds a little textural variation. I’m again surprised that a white chocolate based product turns out to be the best of the range.

The dark chocolate bar in the range features a 66% Amedei coating with a praline and almond filling. The ingredients are all natural, as in the rest of the range, though this particular bar features ‘natural flavours’ at the end of the ingredients list – absent in all the others, a little mysterious and something I’d question in a product from any other maker. I’m suspicious of anything in a recipe that is not a known food. ‘Flavours’ may be innocent enough, but transparency is better, especially as Amedei make a point of telling us that the bars contain no soy lecithin or colourings. Perhaps Amedei can clarify?

The hazelnuts used are ‘Tonda gentile delle Langhe’ Piemonte variety, which create a gentle textural background for the well roasted almond. The flavour balance is very good, though personally I would have preferred a bit more of a kick – perhaps a little salt? The length here is a little sour, so in this topsy-turvy praline-filled bar world, the white chocolate offering in the Quadrotti Toscani range comes out best, while the dark praline is the least successful.

Crema Toscana alla Nocciola

Amedie's new chocolate cream spread

A new departure for Amedei, a cream spread, again made with ‘Tonda gentile delle Langhe’ Piemonte variety hazelnuts, in this case making up 47% of the recipe. There’s no doubting the gorgeousness of this spread – a good simple recipe, made with quality ingredients.

Personally I could have lived with a higher chocolate content, though I challenge anyone who tries ‘Crema Toscana’ to deny that they didn’t eat at least some of it directly from the jar with a spoon.

All in all, interesting and accessible departures from Amedei that should bring their name to a wider audience.