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Terroir is a word more and more people interested in sustainable living and #EatingLocal are becoming familiar with. Simply put, it is all the factors that give an ingredient from a particular place a particular flavour. It is also an important concept in local and hyperlocal consumption of goods and in reducing one’s carbon footprint. In the case of chocolate, the terroir includes climate, soil, cacao genes, fermentation, and drying. Since fermentation must be done on or near the farm, the skill and expertise of these immediate post-harvest processes become crucial factors in the purity, taste, and ‘premium-ness’ of chocolate. This is all the more reason for chocolate makers and chocolate lovers to communicate with, respect, and learn from cacao farmers—unsurprisingly, a new phenomenon.
What makes chocolate artisanal, or as they call it in the biz, "bean-to-bar"? The term started as a way for small chocolate makers to distinguish their offerings from both chocolatiers as well as mass produced chocolate. Most chocolatiers and mass-produced chocolate companies procure processed cocoa and then make confections out of it. Very often, the cocoa is also put through an alkalinization process, through which it loses some of its inherent acidity; it may even have additives like vanilla, which can mask the flavor and "imperfections" of the cocoa. Mass-produced chocolates sometimes don’t even have cocoa as a major ingredient, and they can be very high in sugar content. Bean-to-bar chocolate makers, on the other hand, buy the cacao beans themselves and are involved in all the processes before a bar is produced: cleaning, roasting, cracking, winnowing, and grinding the cacao beans. This retains terroir, and this is what makes it premium.
A quick note on the difference between cacao and cocoa: the tree that bears the fruit with beans is called Theobroma cacao (now you understand why the chain is called Theobroma!). Raw versions of the beans are called cacao, and the processed versions of the beans’ products are called cocoa. Bean-to-bar makers turn to the cacao to cocoa themselves.
Chocolate – the byword for love, romance, and decadence for centuries, occupies a counterintuitive and controversial space in food history. For centuries, several systems of oppression, from slavery to child labor, have prevailed around the production of cocoa. Ivory Coast, one of the largest producers of cocoa in the world, has a steady stream of buses from neighboring Burkina Faso carrying children as young as 12 to work on the cacao farms as laborers. About two-thirds of the world’s cocoa supply comes from West Africa, where, according to a 2015 U.S. Labor Department report, more than 2 million children were engaged in dangerous labor in cocoa-growing regions. And who buys these products? All the biggest and best-known chocolate brands you can think of. Furthermore, there is the ever-present threat of climate change: the shrinking habitat where cacao grows most (West Africa, Ecuador), which is pushing cacao farms further up into the mountains, to areas that are either unsuitable for cultivation or have already been designated as wildlife preserves. All the more reason, therefore, to buy local.
In India, while wild cacao has been growing in parts of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, large-scale cacao plantations were introduced as recently as the 1970s. And now, there are homegrown brands available that source their beans from these very farms, the majority of which are located in South India. A few of our own personal favorites include:
• Naviluna (Mysore-based and winner of several international awards)
• Mason & Co. (Auroville-based with an all-female workforce)
• Paul and Mike (so named because the founders, while traveling in South America to understand the business, met two cacao farmers named Paul and Mike, who proved incredibly helpful)
• Soklet (Tamil Nadu based chocolate company that goes beyond "bean-to-bar"—it is tree-to-bar! Plus, the packaging includes beautiful Kanjeevaram motifs. What’s not to like!)
• Kocoatrait (Chennai-based brand that claims to be a zero-waste chocolate; their wrappers are upcycled using reclaimed cotton from garment factories and reclaimed cocoa shells)
• Pascati (India’s first USDA Organic & Fairtrade chocolate maker)
Colonialism is a constant feature in all pieces about food. Hernan Cortes, the Spanish conquistador, may have been the first European to encounter "xocoatl"—a bitter cocoa drink—in the court of Montezuma II in 1519. And, as is par for the course, the Spanish started shipping cacao beans back home. It then spread and occupied the pride of place that it does now. It has not been without atrocities, irreversible climate change, and ongoing human rights violations. Why be complicit in all that when you could be indulging in your favorite bar, made ethically and locally? Especially when this morally superior choice also comes in such uniquely Indian flavors as thandai, desi rabdi, and even bhut jolokia chilli!
Eat local. And always, always, stay sweet.
