The Chocolate Advocate will be creating a taste and value rating system that will take into account two variables. The first will be overall taste (aroma, flavors and textures). The second will include price.

No surprise to anyone, Amedei, and Domori will be at the top of the pack. In general the best chocolates have been European. As we have noted time and time again, the chocolate industry is like the wine industry 20 years ago. Everyone produced and drank bulk wine. The best of the best wines were European. Chocolate is dominated by bulk grown, cloned, high yield, low flavor cacao.

In general, American tend to like sugar, flavored with chocolate. Our tastebuds are changing as our palates become more sophisticated.

Regional chocolates are just starting. Fifteen years from now there will be dozens of chocolate appellations. Companies like Caoni chocolate, the first company in the world to use only single region arriba cacao, are already discovering micro regions that will yield extraordinary chocolate.

Chocolate makers focus on the process of making chocolate. Little attention is given to the cacao as it is just blended into a fairly uniform product. Wine makers live in the vineyards, as they know without the best fruit you cannot make the best wine. Regional chocolate makers are connected to the farms, The chocolate is produced using European technology, but the focus is shifted to the fruit, the cacao.

Read the labels. If a chocolate is using a top-notch cacao, it will tell you what type and where it is from. Right now, the best cacao comes from the Americas, period. The supply of the best chocolate is difficult to change. Arriba and Criollo take 5-7 years to grow and have very low yields compared to the clones or bulk produced cacao from Africa.

The entire chocolate industry is dominated by very few chocolate makers, Barry Callebaut, perhaps the most known. Consumers may think of fine wine makers and chocolatiers as being the same lot, each in control, or at least overseeing, ever step of the process to insure the best possible wine or chocolate. In Britain (the largest consumer of chocolate per capita), for example, nearly all if not all of the chocolatiers, whether large companies or small independents, purchase their chocolate from the bulk producers, to melt, mold, blend into candy and package. The art/culinary creativity is in adding wonderful flavors to someone else's chocolate. Chocolatiers focus on “downstream" processes; blending, mixing, flavoring, molding, creating wonderful branding and packaging, not making chocolate.

Going on a wine tour you will quickly note that winemakers know what is going on in the vineyards. Once the grapes are harvested, the winemaker takes full control. Almost all chocolatiers count on bulk growers and producers to make their chocolates. Fortunately for all chocolate candy lovers, artisan chocolate candies abound. Chocolatiers, such as Enric Rovira, have been creating culinary wonders using chocolate as a base for decades. Enric is a sensory genius akin to any of the world’s best winemakers, however even more creative. Cacao is more complex than grapes. Breathe in the 400 distinct smells that emanate from the cocoa bean, chocolate's key ingredient. A rosé, in contrast, has only 14. Chocolate's complexity has enabled the artisan world of chocolate candy or chocolate blending to focus exclusively on “downstream” processes (flavoring, mixing, molding, adding fruits, nuts, chilies, creating beautiful packaging and marketing. Chocolate contains hundreds of natural chemicals, adding to the complexity and mystique. The next generation of artisan candy makers are focusing as much, or more attention on cacao and chocolate making. The best of the best will control every step of the process, just like great wine makers. Bulk is simply too generic, too vanilla, for the artisan chocolate maker.

The chocolate industry today is truly like the wine industry twenty plus years ago. Almost everyone drank bulk wine. To be really special we moved up to a bottle of rosé in a clay bottle. Today, the wine industry and markets are extremely sophisticated with "estates" wines coming from tiny plots of land with each grape hand inspected. Wine makers have taken artisan production to new heights, creating wines of extraordinary complexity. Chocolate makers are going to follow this same path, creating boutique/reserve chocolates that will excite chocolate lovers and raise market expectations.

Bulk is not bad. Blending cacao (or grapes for wines) from many sources and regions yields stabile/predictable/similar flavors and aromas of chocolate, eliminating the risks and eliminating variability while keeping the costs of production down. This ubiquitous bulk blending, of course, eliminates the possibility of creating a truly extraordinary chocolate. Bulk also means that the best cacao (all of which comes from America) travels long distances to Europe or “Pennsylvania” to be blended with the bulk cacao that is mostly grown in Africa. (Most of the world’s cacao is cultivated in Africa). As noted, the artisan chocolate industry is heading in the same direction as the wine industry. It has indeed already done so in the “downstream processes.” We already have exotic chocolate candies of every imaginable blend in every possible style of package. The art of packaging, flavoring and blending chocolates has given us “cult chocolate candy” that is expensive and incredible fantastic to eat.

The next wave for high-end chocolate is going to be estate, micro regional (appellations) chocolates and/or free-range or wild cacao. American cacao is already recognized as the best. Most high-end chocolate brands now promote Ecuadorian or Venezuelan regional chocolates. Consumers must note that most of the chocolate from these regions is cloned cacao. The new artisan chocolate makers (focusing on upstream processes such as growing, selecting, fermenting, drying rare original cacao and converting this cacao into chocolate in very small batches) are going to create chocolates that will earn and garner cult status. We believe that cacao from regions such as Los Rios in Ecuador will triple in price once consumers learn “how good, good is.” Once you have a 1989 Haut Brion it is really difficult to enjoy bulk wine. Cultivated blueberries are not bad but they simply cannot compare in flavor to the original/wild ones.

The new artisan chocolate makers, such as Caoni and Republica Del Cacao, walk the forests, know the farmers, monitor and teach proper fermentation methods. They hand select every lot of cacao. This artisan, regional and estate approach to making chocolate has created chocolates that are some of the best in the world. Caoni's chocolate factory is only hours away from its cacao trees. The best chocolate makers all know how fragile cacao is. Caoni does not believe in letting their hand selected cacao ever get out their control. In 20 years there will be dozens of artisan chocolate makers in the countries where the best original cacao exists (Venezuela, Ecuador and some parts of Colombia and Peru). The small supply of the rare, fragile, regional and original cacaos will, hopefully, not be bulked purchased, thus reducing the opportunities for artisan chocolate production.

Learning to enjoy fine wine is a process whereby most people initially focus on sweet wine versus dry wine. Chocolate also has an initial focus; texture or feel, smooth and creamy, is what stands out while we educate our senses. The focus on texture over flavor and aroma is likely because we all grew up on milk chocolate products that are rich in texture and void of chocolate flavors and aromas. The art/science of chocolate tasting has a long way to go in order to catch up to the wine industry. The complexity of chocolate, the complete focus on candy making by most chocolatiers, coupled with the lack of Criollo and Arriba cacao (the world’s best) has made chocolate-flavored candy the benchmark for chocolate. The flavors and aromas of artisan chocolate are gaining attention; however, the sensory experts have much work to do in order to create descriptions of chocolate flavors and aromas that align with artisan chocolates.

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