White, dark, milk, bittersweet, semisweet - whatever your chocolate persuasion, it's easy, delicious and even healthy(!) to be livin' la vida cocoa.
But how does that perfectly unassuming cacao bean make its merry way into shiny foil wrappers around the globe? We'll let you in on a little secret: It doesn't involve tiny orange-faced, green-haired men.
Here to raise the bar on your level of chocolatey understanding is Ray Major, the head of the development team at Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker.
Five Facts About the Origin of Chocolate: Ray Major
1. Chocolate is fruit
“Cacao beans are seeds found inside the fruit or pod of the cacao tree. Roughly 500 cacao beans will produce one pound of bittersweet chocolate. To put this into perspective, it takes two men one day to harvest and prepare enough cacao to make 120 pounds of dark chocolate - a labor-intensive process, but well worth it!
Nearly 95 percent of the world’s cacao can be found +/- fifteen degrees from the Equator. Anywhere there is a tropical rainforest cocoa can grow. And, every growing region in the world produces its own unique flavor.”
2. Chocolate is like wine - it has terroir
“Genetics of the planted varieties affect cacao flavor, as does the care and techniques used in fermentation and drying the beans, and environmental influences of the growing region - what vintners call 'terroir.'
Cacao from Pará State, Brazil - for example - has notes of pear, green apple and white wine. Beans from Indonesia have bright acidity and citrus notes. Panama is characteristically earthy and spicy with a strong chocolate flavor. What you like really depends on what you are looking for in your chocolate and how adventurous you are.”
3. Blending beans gives the best flavor
“Each type of cacao has a very unique taste, but few have a complete flavor profile from start to finish. Madagascar beans have citrus, fruity front notes that then tail off in complexity; Ghana beans start slowly with big notes of chocolate in the middle; and Trinidad beans have licorice, tobacco, leathery notes that linger on in the end.
If you combine these three, the flavor profile stretches much longer in your mouth than it otherwise would by itself. The blend will make a more complex and interesting chocolate bar.”
4. The meaning of percentages
“The number you often see on premium dark chocolate bar labels is cacao content; the percentage of the bar that is derived from the cacao bean in the form of chocolate liquor, cocoa butter or cocoa powder.
If an extra dark chocolate bar label reads “82% Cacao," that means that 82 percent of the formula is derived from the cacao bean. You can normally assume the remainder of the percentage to be sugar.”
5. Cacao vs. cocoa...there’s no real difference!
“The vernacular can be confusing, but cacao and cocoa really mean the same thing. The Latin word for cocoa is cacao, so most European countries use this term while English-speaking countries have adopted use of the familiar word cocoa, as in cocoa powder.
In the artisan chocolate industry, cacao is generally used in reference to anything mentioning cacao in its raw form - the tree, bean or seeds, nibs, percentage.”
