The New Taste of Chocolate

“Chocolat” had a great deal of mystic appeal well before Juliette Binoche. Most adults are still drawn to chocolate for reasons other than the seductive flavor. It also brings back memories of childhood. I graduated from Hershey’s kisses to my first frozen Milky Way. The ice cream parlor where I had my first chocolate ice cream soda with chocolate ice cream is still vivid in my mind. My mother used to send me off to school every day with a cup of Droste’s cocoa. I still remember that it came from the Netherlands in a small tin red container. Later, for reasons that were not clear at the time, I always picked the little dark rectangular packages ( I didn’t know they were bittersweet) from the Hershey’s or Nestle’s assortment that my mother served during her card games.

I never thought about from where this wonderful flavor came. I just knew that I liked it. As I grew older, I continued to be attracted to the darker European chocolates such as Godiva and Teuscher. There was less known then about butter fat and cacao beans than chicken fat and coffee beans. I thought that Swiss and Belgian chocolates came totally from Switzerland and Belgium.

It turns out that chocolate and coffee have many things in common. Both are derived from tropical agricultural areas slightly above and below the equator. Both are grown world wide from Trinidad, Mexico, Venezuela , Brazil to Africa, India, Malaysia and Indonesia. Finally, both have a world wide population addicted to the flavors created from roasted beans.

It is hard to know how long the cacao bean and chocolate have been cultivated. The belief is that it originated in Mexico and proliferated through Central and South America ending up in Africa and Asia. It was already an established  favorite used in food and drink by the Aztecs when the Spanish invaders arrived. Chicken Mole is still a classic Mexican dish with a chocolate sauce. The Spanish brought it back to Europe where it became a favored drink of the aristocracy. It took off from there.


Multiple beans grow inside a large pod on a cacao tree. The pod is harvested, opened and the beans are allowed to ferment. In the best of circumstances, they are set out to dry naturally. Then like coffee, they are graded, bagged and sent to be  roasted and processed in industrial countries. The size of the worldwide industry can be gauged by the fact that the small Island of Hispaniola, divided into the two countries of  Haiti and The Dominican Republic, exports 40,000 Metric tons of beans a year. 


Pods in Various State of Ripening, 
dried beans and filler

Quality and prices vary tremendously worldwide with 90% of the beans in the low end bulk category that is used by mass chocolate producers. These beans can contain as little as 14% Cacao content. In order to qualify for the higher bittersweet rank, the beans must contain at least 35% Cacao while the top quality 1% of all beans contains as much as 71% Cacao. Attempts to label all candy packages with Cacao content has met with consistent resistance.    

When the beans reach their destination, they are processed and roasted. After the highly controlled roasting is completed, the beans may be blended to go through a refining process called conching. This process was developed by Rodolphe Lindt in the 1800s and whose name still appears on quality chocolates. At that point the chocolate is allowed to harden into small bars for public consumption or into bulk bars to go to individual boutique candy makers.

Recently chocolate has moved from its coffee bean cousin to a wine like aura. Single origin chocolates from a specific farm area (mostly in Venezuela or Trinidad) have attracted the interest of gourmets.  Chocolate tasting sessions are now high on the upper foodie agenda.

French manufacturer Vahlrona recently introduced The Grand Cru concept to chocolate roasting and blending. It is often specified as the brand of choice in sophisticated chocolate dessert recipes.  Former Napa champagne maker John Scharffenberger brought his winemaking concepts to the newly formed Scharffenberger Chocolatier. He has partnered with Robert Steinberg who trained under famed French chocolatier Bernachon to open this high quality small roaster-blender facility with vintage equipment in the San Francisco Bay area.

Today, chocolate is a lot more than a silver Valentine kiss or a milk chocolate Hershey Bar. It’s “The New Taste of Chocolate”. Especially since recent medical studies have clearly shown that those that eat a reasonable quantity of dark bittersweet chocolate receive significant life extending benefits. Red Wine and Dark Chocolate – who knows what will result.