China Wants Our Chocolate?

If you’ve been paying attention to the business news in any publication, blog or newscast, you know that in terms of consumerism, China is big. And China is getting bigger. In a country of 1.3 billion people, there are now over one million millionaires, and they like the good life. They play golf, maintain multiple bank accounts, buy electronics and fine jewelry and travel internationally. Oh, and they are interested in chocolate. Not ravenously, obsessively interested just yet. But it’s coming. The signs are there, including the World Chocolate Wonderland in Shanghai, opened in 2011, where everything from Ming-era vases to the Qin Shi Huang Terra Cotta Army is crafted in chocolate,

Lawrence Allen, a business leader, author and former executive with both Hershey and Nestlé, wrote a fascinating book on chocolate and the Chinese; specifically, the almost limitless market offered in this vast country versus how to market a product so loved in so much of the rest of the world to a population virtually unaware of its existence until the mid 1990s. The book, Chocolate Fortunes: The Battle for the Hearts, Minds and Wallets of China’s Consumers (AMACOM, 2009) is not merely how the “Big Five” confectioners brought their products to Chinese consumers, who are certainly an eager and interested population. It’s about formulating new products to cater to their specific tastes, managing the minutiae of government regulations, building and staffing new factories, distribution strategies, pricing and ultimately learning (or not) that in order to manage expectations in such a huge new market, the old strategies were often of little or no use. It was not simply a matter of throwing a big-money, mass marketing campaign out there, hoping it would stick with consumers. China is not just big, it’s changing very fast, as Allen reminds us:

“Despite China’s radical transformation over the past three decades, it is still a work in progress. In the last few decades there has been a historic mass economic migration in terms of consumer power that has made hundreds of millions of Chinese consumers physically, culturally, and financially accessible to multinational companies. As China’s distribution infrastructure and quality retail environments continue to penetrate ever deeper into the country, with each new air-conditioned supermarket that opens, tens of thousands of people will suddenly have access to chocolate for the first time. As this process continues, even if 20 million of China’s near billion inaccessible consumers emerge each year to become accessible consumers, it will take another half-century for all of China’s citizens to make this passage.”

If you want to find out more about where chocolate is (literally) going next, Allen’s book charts that path. He keeps the technical and economic jargon simple and tells the story from an insider’s view, with an eye towards keeping the reader who loves all things either chocolate or Chinese interested.

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And speaking of where chocolate has been: two more from my Canadian stash:

72% Rogers Darker Chocolate: “Darker” meaning darker than some of the other bars in their line. This is pure Canadian kitsch, from the raised maple leaf on alternating squares to the fact that it’s made in Canada. It’s a very sweet bar (sugar is the second ingredient) with good snap  and a somewhat acidic finish. It’s not life-changing, but it is a respectable bar.

Dolfin 70%: This bar from Belgium isn’t just contained in the usual rip-open plastic. It’s encased in a classy envelope-style plastic wrap as well. Presentation means everything and takes nothing away from this slightly bitter beauty, which hits all the right notes of plum, citrus and earth.

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Toronto Travel: Record-Breaking Twenty Bars!

Chocolate on top of chocolate: taking a hot cocoa break at Soma Chocolatier, Toronto.

And you thought starting this blog with 19 chocolate bars from New York City was a little absurd. I brought home 20 bars from Toronto.

Talk about leaving no bean behind.

We did a lot of walking in our week away. Between the poutine, the peameal bacon (neither of which I was overly fond of), the pastries (which were excellent, thanks to the many small French bakeries) and the food of a dozen ethnic neighborhoods, we had no choice. Toronto boasts a considerable immigrant population, with more than half its residents born outside of Canada, and 20 percent of all of Canada’s immigrants residing here. Over 140 different languages are spoken in Toronto, and the city’s varied cuisines reflect the newcomers’ tastes. Luckily for the chocophile, this means never having trouble finding a new or favorite dessert, bar or beverage. I found new-to-me brands in upscale markets, in grocery and drug stores and in specialty shops such as bookstores and the outrageous Soma Chocolatier, a spot that came highly recommended, and turned out to be a high point of the trip. I’ll be reviewing them over the next few months, starting with two bars:

Valrhona Abinao Puissant & Tannique ((Powerful and Tannic) 85%: The box is dark. The wrapper inside the box is dark. The second you open the box, you smell the darkness. Powerful, indeed. And you are drawn to this bar, done as well as everything Valrhona does. It’s rich, strong, not as bitter as you would think 85% would be. Fruity and woody with a perfect balance of cacao and sugar.

Camino Fair Trade Organic 55%: This ought to be better, given that it’s from Switzerland and despite the fact that it’s organic. It’s got a nice, chewy texture, but the smell and the taste are just plain “off.” The odor and flavor are reminiscent of raw citrus and metal; that classic conundrum I’ve run into so often, even with the well-known organic/fair trade bars. The idea is good but the execution, not so much.

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Castronovo Chocolate: Round 2

They are closing in on the May 1 opening date for the Stuart store, but Denise and Jim Castronovo still found time to introduce me to two more chocolates in their line: the 71% Criollo Cacao Peru, which I admit I’ve had stashed in the chocolate fridge, saving for the right tasting time, and their latest creation, the 72% Wild Amazon Cacao from Venezuela. When I stopped at their booth at the Palm Beach Gardens greenmarket last week to pick up the Venezuelan, I had the opportunity to talk the ears off of two very nice ladies who were looking over the Castronovo’s bars, trying to decide if they were worth a try.

I told them about my previous experiences with organic chocolate and explained why it was important to support a local artisan making quality product. They did buy, hopefully because they wanted to and not to make me shut up. No doubt they thought I was a company “plant” disguised as an ordinary citizen who just happened to wander into the market.

No shill here; just a happy consumer who’s pleased to find local organic chocolate that tastes like no other organic chocolate out there. You can find out more about the company at https://www.facebook.com/CastronovoChocolate.

As for the two new bars:

• The Venezuela bar is sweet on the nose, but bitter on the bite. It’s got a nice snap, good shine and the cacao flavor is very pure, with a classic bittersweet “tang” on the end. You can easily enjoy the entire 1.25 ounce bar.
  The Peru bar has less tang, more mildness and a mouthful of fruit flavor, with strawberries very pronounced; so much so, you’re almost looking for seeds between your teeth. But no dental floss needed here. This is a great way to enjoy the best of both worlds.

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Game-Changing Organic Chocolate

I almost decided to walk by the little booth at the local farmer’s market. The banner announcing their organic chocolate was the reason.

If you’ve read my reviews, you know how I feel about what I’ve tasted. It’s not good. Musty, metallic and just plain “off” flavor has meant tossing most of the bars I’ve tried after one bite or so.

Until now, when I tried my farmer’s market find: Castronovo Chocolate, Florida’s first bean-to-bar chocolatier. Their products are organic, single-origin, come in a range of cacao contents and they taste like chocolate you want to keep eating.

Chocolate maker Denise Castronovo used to work in the geographic information technology business, but she’s always been an artist, primarily working in pottery. When the geotech business slowed down, she turned to another hands-on art form: chocolate. She and her husband Jim, the man behind the counter at the farmer’s market, have been dedicating themselves to finding the best beans from Central and South America, roasting them, winnowing them, conching and tempering the ingredients (cocoa beans, cane juice rather than sugar and cocoa butter) until they end up with 1.25-ounce squares.

Are we talking about an organic chocolate that finally makes the premium grade? Indeed, we are. I’ve tried two of the three bars I purchased, the 70% Bolivia Trinitario Cacao and 70% Dominican Republic Trinitario Cacao. The Dominican had good shine and snap, and the citrus flavor was distinctive, yet light. I immediately thought of grapefruit when I tasted it, but it’s gently applied, not slathered on. The Bolivian also shines and snaps, and tastes like a thick, rich cup of chocolate with a layer of coffee on the bottom; a mix of dessert and beverage.Since I taste early in the morning, common sense prevented me from finishing either bar. Desire made me want to consume them as breakfast.

Jim and Denise have some additional suggestions in the form of adult beverages to enhance the chocolate experience. They recommend either coffee or a Cabernet Sauvignon for the Bolivian, dark rum for the Dominican and gin or a Shiraz (Syrah) for the 71% Criollo Cacao Peru, which is my third bar, and the one I have yet to taste. Rest assured, I am looking forward to it.

At the moment, you can contact Denise and Jim through their Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/CastronovoChocolate) or if you come to South Florida on vacation, at either the Palm Beach Gardens greenmarket (http://www.pbgfl.com/content/76/144/default.aspx) or Fort Pierce greenmarket (http://www.fortpiercefarmersmarket.com/). A store is in the works, set to open May 1, at 555 Colorado Avenue, Stuart, FL. In the pursuit of high-quality chocolate, a store by the locals, for the locals (any anyone else who wants to visit or order) cannot come soon enough.

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Can Inexpensive Chocolate Be Good?

Moser Roth – chocolate from Aldi (Photo credit: lightsight)

I visited an Aldi store that opened recently near my office, and of course, I had to find out if there was any chocolate on the shelves.

If you know anything about the Germany-based Aldi chain, you know it’s a discount grocery store that carries very little in comparison to most American supermarkets. No floral, photo, pharmacy, fresh bakery, salad bar or deli counter. Just the basic, mostly private-label choices of produce, prepackaged breads, dairy, fresh meats, frozen seafood, paper products and health and beauty goods.

I’ve written about the chain for another online publication, but not about their chocolate. I found two bars to try, and decided for the price (less than $3 for each eight-ounce bar), it was worth the risk. If they were awful, it proves that money can and does buy the best. If they were at least acceptable, it proves that quality can come at a favorable price.

The two bars I tried, Choceur Dark 45% and Moser Roth 70% were tasted at the same time of day (7 a.m., which is my normal tasting time) on two different days.The Choceur Dark is from Austria, and the best thing I could say is that it was pleasantly OK. The bar had shine, but no snap. The flavor was a little tangy, not as sweet as you would expect this percentage, but there just wasn’t much to distinguish it from any drugstore bar.

The Moser Roth was closer to what you’d expect from a high-end bar. Bitter, with a decently deep chocolate flavor, but nothing that would make you buy more of it, even for the price. It’s not bad, just not very satisfying.

Both bars contain vanillin, the artificially synthesized vanilla flavor, which certainly didn’t help the flavor profile. If you’ve eaten the highest-quality chocolate for a while, even a small amount of the poor or middle-of-the-road stuff is unpleasant to the palate. I understand the need for products like these. It’s an opportunity for people of limited financial means or those with a genuine lack of chocolate knowledge to obtain the best. Both are a step up from the mass-produced morass. Not a very strong step, but a step nonetheless.

 

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Chocolate From The Land Of Fjords?

What’s the first thing you think of when someone mentions Iceland?

Ice, snow and cold? The reality: the climate is warmed by the Gulf Stream and is quite temperate. But it has it’s share of magnificent fjords, glaciers and permanently snow-capped mountains.

Large expanses of empty land? True to a great extent; 320,000 people living in 40,000 square miles make it the most sparsely populated country in Europe. And yes, Iceland is part of Europe, not the Arctic.

A tongue-twisting language with a lot of accents, umlauts and consonants? Well, Icelandic is a Germanic language, descended from Old Norse and Norwegian dialects.

But would you think about chocolate?

Nói Síríus thinks you should. The company (http://noi.is/English/About_Noi_Sirius), established in 1920, is the largest confectioner in Iceland, with 130 employees and a 30% total confectionery market share in that country. Most of their output involves sweets, such as the chocolate bars I found in one local shop (my Fresh Market store), chocolate-covered raisins, licorice, Easter eggs and jellied sweets, but they also import and distribute other products such as breakfast cereals.

If you’re concerned as I was about product quality, given the travel distance, don’t worry. I bought the four bars that were available: plain bars in the following percentages: 33%, 45%, 60% and 70%. The first surprise was opening the packages (For this tasting, I tried the 33% and 70%). Each package had two-150 gram (5.3 ounce) bars, which was a bonus for the price of $8 I paid for each package. Another bonus is the recipe printed on the outside of each package, in case you find you cannot simply eat all the contents.

The 33% should have been the lightest and creamiest, and indeed it was. Very smooth, slightly buttery and not very sweet, and sugar is listed as the first ingredient. It is a milk chocolate for adults, and it won’t send you running for a big glass of water afterwards. The 70% was slightly bitter with a slightly wood finish, but it’d definitely the kind of chocolate you’ll go back to.

The English-language version of the website is good when it comes to explaining what the company is about, but the product description is a little thin. There are online and brick-and-mortar sources, listed on the company’s website, where you can get Nói Síríus bars. Note that Whole Foods is listed as a source, but I have not encountered the product there. The Fresh Market (http://www.thefreshmarket.com/) is where I found my bars.And there is only one importer in the U.S., located in California (Nu-Breath Incorporated, 1-800-365-2177).

Sometimes, you get your chocolate wherever you can. Other times, you find it in the most unlikely places. Either way, it can be a good deal and great eating, along with some history. Pakka pér (thank you) Nói Síríus.

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  Nói Síríus (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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Sweet (Local) Find At The Greenmarket

I enjoy tasting chocolate from all over the world and learning about the international artisans who work from bean to bar, but I admit the happiest find is often the one closest to home.

At the local greenmarket, amid the crowds, commerce and intoxicating smells, I spotted a small white tent, simply decorated with white plates, bow-tied white and unpainted wooden boxes and chocolates. The name on the tent, J. Williams Chocolate Company Palm Beach, was not one I knew. And no wonder; the company started only a few weeks ago, based in a small West Palm Beach office.

Chocolatier Holly McCloskey isn’t the J. Williams behind the company. That would be her father, for whom she named the company. McCloskey works out of an office on Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard, and creates in a commissary kitchen nearby. Her signature piece is the Monkey Bar, available in dark or milk chocolate. It has pretzel bits, caramel, peanut butter and a bit of Himalayan sea salt. The bar would topple into too-sweet if not for the salt, but it’s perfectly balanced with this addition.

J. Williams offers a small but focused list of chocolates, including truffles (hazelnut, mocha and Habanero); bonbons (cheesecake, dulce de leche); milk chocolate almond or cashew bark and chocolate-covered almonds. You can buy by the piece, the quarter, half or full pound, and have them packaged in white gift boxes or the sleek blond wood boxes, which can be custom-decorated. Prices range from $8 to $20 for a half-pound of chocolates and $20 to $36.50 for a pound. McCloskey can also take orders for custom chocolates and specialized packaging. She is still working on her website, but can be reached at (561) 379-9058 or toll-free at (888) 658-5488.

And a few more recent bar samples:

Francois Pralus 75% Cuba Trinitario: Stored for a year, it still has snap, though there was some bloom. But the taste still rings like a bell. It’s sharp and earthy  and woodsy in a way that makes me wish I had not left it as the last bar in the NYC stash, or at least bought more than one.

Sweet Riot 70%: The beans are Latin American, the company is based in New York, the bar is made in Italy, and each square has twenty-one calories. The label is descriptive, colorful and fun. The bar is Fair Trade and certified organic. Yes, I got sucked into another organic bar. Blame the lure of the pretty packaging. And while this bar has that metallic kick all the organic bars seem to have, at least this one isn’t too pronounced. It’s lighter in cocoa flavor and sweeter than I expect a 70% to be, but it’s not bad.

Neuhaus 70% Extra Dark: Is it wrong to call a Belgian chocolate just ordinary? This one is. It’s not dark, or extra or strong, unlike what the label says. It’s smooth, on the sweet side, with no grainy texture. It’s pleasant, but lacks much character.

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Are You Smarter Because Of Chocolate?

Dr. Franz Messerli, a Swiss-born hypertension expert, has put forth a theory that is interesting to many and surprises not a single person whose daily habit includes at least a bite of high-quality chocolate:

Smart people very likely eat chocolate, and it may even help their cognitive function.

In a paper recently mentioned in Forbes and published by the New England Journal of Medicine, Messerli presented mathematical correlations between the number of Nobel prize winners per 10 million population and the consumption of chocolate per capita. He ran the numbers in 23 countries, and the results place Switzerland in first place for both the number of Nobel winners and per capita consumption: 31 winners and a per capita consumption of 13 kilograms (28 pounds, 10 ounces) per year. Sweden was second with the same number of winners as Switzerland but a much lower per capita consumption at 6 kg (13 pounds, three ounces) per year, and Denmark, in third place, got the numbers back to their expected levels: 25 winners and 9 kg (19 pounds,13 ounces) per person per year.

And the United States? A mid-pack runner at 10 Nobel winners and a per capita consumption of 5.5 kg (12 pounds, two ounces) per year per person. At the bottom of the list are China and Japan. If Sweden is excluded as the exception to the rule, the results are pretty linear and support the theory, which Messerli admits arriving at by observing the history and not by any type of random, controlled trials.

Is Messerli just having fun at the expense of the world’s geniuses? Or is there something more to his hypothesis? Is his paper one more piece of proof that chocolate is not only good for the body and the soul, it’s also good for the brain?

While you ponder that deep thought, consider these recent bars and truffles I’ve tasted recently:

• Cafè Tasse Noir: A dark chocolate with a distinct vegetable taste. There’s a corn note at the beginning, which I’ve never experienced before, followed by the classic dark, strong Belgian chocolate. The bar has good snap and a slight wine aftertaste.
• Christopher Elbow #1 Dark 70: This bar smells deep, snaps deep and it’s shiny. It’s a 70% that’s 100% excellent. It leans more towards the fruit/wine spectrum rather than the sweet side, This is a bar you can eat, use for confections or for fondue. You will savor it in any form you use it.
• Cacao Art Limón Truffle: A truffle I found at last week’s Fort Lauderdale Festival of Chocolate. The expected rich pillow of smooth chocolate, and then the sudden hit of lime on your tastebuds like a just-mixed mojito. Is it a lime truffle with a chocolate chaser, or a chocolate truffle with a lime kick? Doesn’t matter – it’s good!
  

  Will these make you smarter? Or are are you already intelligent enough to eat a few a day?

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Chocolatier Makes Good – And Makes It Beautiful

Elegance in Shocolaaate: by the piece or the box, each ingredient represents part of the life of Cristina Vives and Diana Pace.

When you ask Shocolaate’s president Cristina Vives when her company started, her answer is, “It depends.”

The company began as a hobby several years ago, making chocolates that her friends loved, but her first box officially sold on Valentine’s Day, 2010.

At this point, the start hardly matters. What counts is where the company is now. And where it’s going. The answer: everywhere and then some. It’s growing and going places.

Vives and her mother Diana Pace are the people behind the artisan Shocolaate: hand-dipped pretzels, cookies, fruits and truffles. Pace is the creative designer, developing the website, photos, packaging and the company’s overall look, which is sleek, simple and lightly touched with a feminine hand.

The key to getting someone to become a Shocolaate client for life? “Getting them to try that first one,” Vives says. “If you get them in one time, they keep coming back.”

Vives knows this first-hand. At last year’s chocolate show in West Palm Beach, she ran out of product the first day, and spent Saturday night into Sunday morning making more, fueled on coffee and fighting the need to sleep. She returned to the show Sunday and had the same success. It’s one of the reasons she and her mother will be attending this week’s Fort Lauderdale Festival of Chocolate at the NSU Arena in Davie, near Fort Lauderdale (http://nova.festivalofchocolate.com/).

Mother and daughter got together in business partly out of necessity, but mostly out of love. “I needed her help here and there with certain things, and little by little, she got more and more involved with the company. We get along well; there’s no drama. Anyone watching us expecting a food fight would be bored,” Vives says.

When you look at their website, which will likely strike you as good enough to eat, you will be drawn to confections both familiar and unusual. There are chocolate-dipped fruits, pretzels and Oreos, ramped up with candy bits and ideal for parties, weddings, birthdays and other special occasions. But it’s the truffles and filled chocolates that are in demand by both individual and corporate buyers, including many hotels in the tri-county area. The dipped sweets are fun, but it’s the truffles that evoke Vives’ personal history and experiences.

“When I cook, or I eat out, I am always looking at food and ingredients and wondering if this or that will work in a truffle. And my own heritage {Diana Pace is Cuban and Italian and Vives’ father is Colombian} also plays into what I create.”

Are there ever any chocolates that don’t make the cut? “No, never. There’s always a home for what I create, no matter the combinations.”

And speaking of combinations, there are some that are literally rich, such as the Star of India (milk chocolate with ginger, honey, chili and 24 karat gold); others are reminders of her heritage, like the Colombian (milk chocolate, coffee, cinnamon and coffee liquor) and still others are very much in the present, including the Orange Blossom (dark chocolate, Grand Marnier, vanilla, fresh orange and candied orange peel).

Why is a company like Shocolaate important? “Everything comes from my hands,” Vives says. “These are  hand-made, hand-rolled, hand-dipped. I touch it, and my heart, soul and history are in every piece. I want people to know what quality is. I love what I do, even when I have to stay up in the small hours of the night. I’m my own boss and I make all my own decisions, from shapes to flavors to where they are sold.”

I’ll grant you this: it’s a long drive to Fort Lauderdale. You need a reason to go? You have a good reason now: Shocolaate.

And a taste test of some of the products:

The S’Mores truffle, with chocolate and marshmallow inside and finely crumbled graham cracker crumbles outside: this is what I call a “smack on the brain cells” truffle. And that’s just what happens when you slice it in half and smell it. It’s so rich and intense that it interrupts your train of thought. OK, now go ahead and try it. Totally worth the wait, wasn’t it?

The French toast truffle has maple syrup and butter, too. And the fact that it’s a white chocolate truffle should make it a no-go for me. It didn’t; it actually worked. Very subtle, with no one flavor overpowering any other.

White chocolate coconut truffle is the least sweet of those tasted, and the kind of thing you want to balance a strong after-dinner beverage, like espresso. The coconut is crunchy and fresh and the filling is smooth.

The Almond Marzipan truffle is at the opposite end of the sweet spectrum from the white chocolate coconut; a little bit goes a long way. If you ever ate the little slices of Italian rainbow cakes, with their tri-colored layers of marzipan and ganache coating, this truffle is that dessert – on steroids.

The Orange Blossom truffle has the appeal of dark chocolate nipped by a tiny triangle of candied orange slice on top. The fruit is almost bitter, slightly chewy – and balances the chocolate nicely.

Website: http://shocolaate.com/default.aspx?p=1

 

The Chocolate You Find In Strange Places

Kentucky (Photo credit: lalunablanca)

I’ve always been an advocate of getting off the interstates and main roads and finding what moves you in places you don’t expect to find much of anything. If you travel, you know the grim progression of gas stations, fast food joints and souvenir stands that line this nation’s roadways like tourist-teasing sentinels, out to get your money in exchange for what you think you want, as well as what you need.

But sometimes, getting off the road gets you a special find – like a chocolate bar you haven’t tried before.

On my recent trip up north, I found most of my best chocolates in small artisan shops in North Carolina and Ohio. But in a chain grocery store in rural Kentucky, I got lucky. We stopped to pick up sandwiches for a picnic lunch, and I wandered over to the candy aisle, just to check and see what kind of confections rural Kentuckians were consuming. And there I spotted it: a chocolate bar called Heidi Grand d’ Or 75%.

The bar is made in Romania, and it turns out that it is one of a line fine bars, including an 85% and several spice, nut and fruit combinations (cranberry, orange, mint, coffee, almond), pralines and seasonal novelties. A helpful map on their website (http://heidi-chocolate.com/store-locator/) shows that the company’s reach is fairly extensive, with stores in the U.S., Canada, Australia, China and parts of Europe and South America. While you cannot order the product directly from the company’s site, you can check the locator map for a store near you. The map for the U.S. locations isn’t really helpful, but it’s a start. Or you can head to a Kroger in rural Kentucky and find it there.

And the taste? Dark, rich and intense, without heavy sugar and too-strong woody notes. The 75% is a balanced and enjoyable bar, with one square going a long way.

Gourmet shops and artisan chocolatiers are always going to be a great source of true favorites and untried chocolate. But take time to take a side trip, leaving the Google map or Garmin behind. Something new could be as close as that shack near the tracks – or the shelf at the local grocery store.