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After a long incubation period, the new fine chocolate industry association Direct Cacao was finally launched during Chocolate Week in London on 12 October 2012. Less than a week later, many of the founding members were in Amsterdam for the second yearly ‘Origin Chocolate Event‘.

Flemish Belgian chocolatier Geert Vercruysse was also at the event, exhibiting his chocolates in the central hall of the Royal Tropical Institute in (Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen). Geert has a reputation for experimentation, using different chocolate from makers from around the world in different combinations in his ganaches.

So it was a moment of serendipity that Geert’s latest collection could almost have been designed as a ‘Direct Cacao’ special, featuring chocolate from members, potential members and other direct sourcing chocolate makers. It was a must, then to take away a box of Geert’s inventive creations to sample.

There’s some free thinking here, with whole, flavoured chocolate bars used to make ganaches – Geert is like a kid in a toy box, but at least he’s playing in the right toy box with the best toys to be found in the chocolatey world. Overall though, the quality of the chocolate used is key and everything else follows effortlessly – good ingredients and good technique equals good chocolates. Easy.

Original Beans Cru Virunga 70% enrobed Grenada 38% Felchlin

Like the Grenada ganaches, Geert has made a special cocoa butter transfer using the Original Beans logo, so there’s really no mistaking whose chocolate is being used. This is direct sourcing and transparency taken to a new level. An interesting milk/dark combination here, with the milk unusually being on the outside.

At first the two origins fight a little, but as the ganache melts the Virunga sweet plum notes come through, with green tea, honey and of course milk popping up because of the milk/dark combination. There’s also a slight floral edge going on, again probably the result of the match of chocolates rather than a distinct note in either. This is rather like matching chocolate with wine or whisky, putting two things together and getting something new that wasn’t in either.

The Grenada Chocolate Company 65% dark-raspberries enrobed Cru Sauvage 68% Felchlin

Tart fresh raspberries paired with the sulphurous rum notes of Grenada 65% couverture. Beautiful chocolatey aftertaste with a burst of raspberry mousse. The raspberries create a great textural effect, somehow both munchably thick but meltingly light at the same time. A very innovative and successful combination.

Pacari 70% Raw enrobed 38% Grenada Felchlin

Something of extremes here, Pacari 70% Raw almost ironically enrobed in a 38% milk chocolate. Very palatable and rounded, with the cream ganache creating a green tea note from the usual Pacari green banana.

Enjoyable, but the cream and milk chocolate probably hide the more interesting notes of Pacari Raw – though some might prefer this softer and more controlled interpretation.

Danta Finca Las Acacias milkganache enrobed Cru Sauvage Bolivia 68% Felchlin

Milk chocolate made in Guatemala from local criollo cacao, mixed up with a dark coating from Felchlin’s famous Beni. Notes of hay and green grass create in a delicate milk ganache that’s not too sweet and that has a clean milk aftertaste.

Original Beans Beni Wild Harvest 68%

Purely Original Beans Beni, both inside and out. Soft toffee notes, blackcurrant jam and hints of coffee, though I suspect closeness in the box to the Grenada dark-raspberries piece has had some influence here. Lightly tannic at the end, but overall very smooth.

Askinosie Del Tambo Ecuador 70% & nibs enrobed Cru Sauvage Bolivia Felchlin

Full peachy dry raisin and wine notes in an exciting ganache that really enhances the flavours of the Del Tambo bar, losing the slightly rougher, drier Askinosie texture but gaining another level of flavour. Geert being Geert has thrown the whole bar in, so you get the nibs as well, though they do tend to go a bit soft inside the ganache.

Akesson’s Black pepper enrobed in Cru Sauvage Bolivia 68% Felchlin

Another ‘whole bar’ experiment, this time with the already flavoured Åkesson’s Organic – Madagascar 75% with Black Pepper. As well as being the source of some of the best cacao in Madagascar and the Pralus-made chocolate he makes from it, Bertil Åkesson is also a master of pepper. His is some of the best you can get and is pretty much all I use in my kitchen. A lot of chocolatiers agree – you’ll often find Åkesson to be the source behind their pepper ganache or bar creations.

Here the ganache softens the initial effect of the pepper, with a creamy fruity notes you’d expect of a Madagascan ganache, then the quality of the pepper coming through softly in a controlled way at the end. Not at all overpowering.

Others in the collection: ‘The Grenada Chocolate Company 82% enrobed in Grenada 38% Felchlin’ – an extreme of Grenadan contrasts with an initial milky hit followed by deep Grenadan fruity rum.

Without knowing it, Geert’s created something special here – a leading edge ganache collection using chocolate from leading edge, directly sourcing chocolate makers. If Direct Cacao and supporters like Geert are a success, this is the future of the fine chocolatier.

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Out of the very pretty, if idiosyncratic, wrapper, the chocolate looks very nice, using the same attractive mould as William Curley. As with a lot of Arribas, it’s quite dark, but the tempering has been done competently if not perfectly and swirling on the back isn’t overly pronounced. It all seems rather immaterial, though, next to the mighty aroma. Powerful waves of plum and prune rush in, then hints of floral and honey (as good Arriba should have but so rarely does), and then more full-bodied sensations of grape and earthy. Not only is it powerful, it’s remarkably balanced and displays a favourable evolution, leaving you prepared for a sensational flavour.

As it goes, though, the flavour is excellent but maybe not sensational. Initially the notes are brown sugar and cocoa, a classic Ecuador. Then something unusual hits, a powerful, unmistakeable taste of cinnamon and cream, so potent one would almost imagine it a flavoured bar. A bit disappointingly the floral hints never really materialise; the rest of the flavour is swallowed up in an earthy finish. Not a depressing, utterly flat result, but one is left wanting more. Texture is also in that same category; it’s good, but one is left wanting more at this high percentage; what should be an ultra-smooth and creamy bar has merely good melt.

But at the end of the day, if one is left wanting more, this is a good result for a very new manufacturer. It indicates there’s real potential here, and even as it is the bar is very much worth getting, probably more than once. If the Chocolate Tree are dedicated to improving their bars, we may see improvement on this chocolate. The ways to improve it here aren’t hard to spot: lower the conching time a bit, to get more distinctiveness in the flavour, and maybe very slightly reduce the roast. It’s a chocolate, though, on its way to success, and with an entry like this, there is reason to expect bean-to-bar chocolate may be here to stay in Scotland.

The post The Chocolate Tree – Ecuador 82% appeared first on Seventy%.

The post The Chocolate Tree – Ecuador 82% appeared first on Seventy%.

In typical Friis-Holm/Bonnat fashion, the bar out of the wrapper looks awe-inspiring, if forbidding in both size, and to some extent, colour. That is, it’s on the dark side, but with an exceptional finish virtually free from imperfections and with ideal temper. The aroma is exceptionally enticing, with raspberries leading the way accompanied by woody hints, then the fruitiness shifting to raisin and grape. Treacley and earthy hints are typical of Chuno and also add power, the boldness of the overall aroma issuing the challenge to taste.

How does the flavour respond to the challenge? Surprisingly meekly. It begins with citrus, possibly a modulation of the raspberry in the aroma, and then the flavour becomes clearly chocolatey, quite neutral before shifting to a drier cocoa with hints of tobacco. Hints of red fruits (redcurrant, raspberry), woody, and treacle justify the aroma. But unusually, all this is very mild, as if a flavour “volume” knob had been turned down to a low setting on a series of exceptional flavours. A glorious evolution, but with rather little resolution.

The texture of the bar – near-perfect with an unbelievably smooth and creamy melt – almost gives away what’s going on: very high cocoa butter percentage. Friis-Holm has proven before that it’s possible to extract good flavour definition in a high cocoa butter bar, but here perhaps the combination of the ferment process and the cocoa butter gets away from him just a bit. It should be noted that the Triple Turned doesn’t seem to be affected in this way. So, inevitably, how do the two compare? Astonishingly, it’s if the bars swap roles between aroma and flavour. The aroma of the Triple Turned is reminiscent of the flavour of the Double Turned, and vice versa. One would certainly not expect this sort of result from a variation in processing. It feels, though, as though the Double Turned may be, in terms of potential, the more interesting, but the Triple Turned will probably yield more consistent results. So it’s going to be a question of batch variation versus formulation. How these develop in time will be a fascinating thing to see.

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The post Friis-Holm – Chuno Double Turned appeared first on Seventy%.

Out of the wrapper, the large, chunky bar has an intimidating look, not just from the size but the darkish colour and somewhat matt finish. It will be said that perhaps the temper on it might be marginally improved, but it’s well within the range of well-tempered. Aroma is surprisingly retreating, soft and reminiscent of vanilla and cream, with hints of tobacco and fruits, along with molasses. Mostly it looks like the flavour will be quite mild, a definite departure from the typically assertive Chuno bean.

As it happens, the flavour isn’t so much mild as it is balanced. The initial flavour is very much dark, sugary raisin/blackberry, then there is a soft vanilla and cocoa interlude, almost like a hot chocolate, before stronger elements reassert themselves: woody and olive with hints of molasses. There’s a good flavour evolution here, with a sense that the peakiness common in single-origins has been smoothed out, so that the progression seems seamless rather than abrupt. Only in Porcelana and other pure Criollos has it heretofore been typical to find such smooth flavour progressions in a single varietal.

As per usual, Friis-Holm does a great job with the texture, as smooth and balanced as is the flavour. Maybe there is a bit too much cocoa butter to be ideal, but that certainly helps the fluidity and provides the appropriate texture for such a refined flavour. Roughness here would just be inappropriate. So how does this put the Triple Turned overall? Ultimately it stands or falls on its process. On the one hand, this is an excellent and accessible chocolate, which will appeal to a wide audience while having enough distinctive character to be convincingly interesting. On the other, it feels as though still better interpretations of the Chuno bean lurk: somehow with the right combination of processes the sense is that something truly extraordinary might result. It doesn’t have that sort of electric appeal, not yet. But regardless of that, it sets a standard for a new way of looking at chocolate, as a total process. Considered as half of a matching pair with the Double Turned, it’s a chocolate that proclaims powerfully that there is no one “canonical” process that can be seen as the only appropriate way of creating a chocolate, rather, there is a spectrum of possibilities, with different outcomes, each of which deserves to find expression.

The post Friis-Holm – Chuno Triple Turned appeared first on Seventy%.

The post Friis-Holm – Chuno Triple Turned appeared first on Seventy%.

Chapon goes for a very polished style in the visuals, quite literally, the bar having the high sheen of the smooth-faced mould. An almost complete lack of moulding defects, and again, that sheen, indicate impressive handling, although the bar is worrisomely darker than typical for the source. However, the aroma is so archetypal of the source as to be a reference standard, immediately bursting out in redcurrant and blueberry, then moving to dark liquorice and wood, with some interesting hints of floral and honey that put it that step above all other Chuao interpretations. It’s hard to imagine an aroma much better or more characteristic than this.

But where the aroma compels tasting, as it turns out, the flavour is much more basic. Initially it begins with fairly generic creamy and chocolatey, before clear signs of strong, heavy roast turn up as the flavour evolves to cocoa and then to coffee, with some hints of ashiness in there as well. Fruity hints do emerge, mostly of a dark blueberryish variety, but on the whole it’s the roast that dominates, unfortunately erasing most of the notes so prominent in the aroma. Not that the flavour is bad per se, but still, a real pity.

It’s really too bad that the flavour speaks of heavy-handedness too, for the texture is at the peak of perfection, impossibly smooth and creamy and completely remaining true to the visual impression. It’s a bar that, to judge from the aroma, could have been the best ever, but for the roast. If it weren’t so aggressive, and if the flavour could have retained the elements so obvious in the aroma, this chocolate would have been very close to getting the unimaginable, a perfect score. But as it is, it turns out to be another worthy and interesting interpretation of the Chuao origin, but no more than that, something worthwhile to try but something that needs a bit of tinkering

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‘Slow Chocolate’ is whole new approach to eating chocolate and the the art of chocolate appreciation.

Fine chocolate is fast becoming as sophisticated as wine, yet we are conditioned to eat chocolate as a sweet snack with little chance of noticing its finer points.

‘Slow Chocolate’ will help to unravel all those years of chocolate snacking by working through each of our chocolate senses one by one.

Rather than tell you what chocolate you should like, ‘Slow Chocolate’ gives you the tools to start you on your own journey towards becoming a chocolate connoisseur.

Through our courses and workshops we explore the gastronomic senses with a series of interactive modules, awakening and educating our palates along the way.

Day course – A workshop of the senses

Our six hour day course is suitable for beginners and connoisseurs alike. Using fun and engaging games and taste experiments we will awaken your chocolate senses. Our superb modern London venue will put you in the right mood and help us take you on a journey of the senses.

Connoisseur steps

We’ll show you the important steps you need to understand chocolate and to eat it correctly. Most of us eat chocolate in completely the wrong way, which is fine if your eating candy of chocolate confectionery, but not really suitable for the new world of fine and origin chocolate. You’ve paid a lot for your origin plantation chocolate, don’t waste that hard earned cash – get the most out of your chocolate by learning a whole new way to taste.

You will come away with a new view on the true taste of chocolate and with simple steps you can use at any time to quickly tell a good chocolate from a bad one. By the end of the day you will be well on the way to becoming a connoisseur.

Includes a light lunch that will keep your palate clean, and refreshments. For your own benefit and that of fellow workshop members, avoid wearing strong perfumes or aftershaves. It is also best to have a light breakfast without strong flavours.

Info

Booking

Book your tickets through PayPal – no account needed, all major cards accepted. Bookings made through Micrograde.com Ltd, our holding company.

Gift certificates: If you are buying tickets for a gift or present, you can download a printable certificate here. Proof of purchase required.

£100 per person

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