Download our newsletter November 2010 with great reviews of our beans!

Quality in gourmet chocolate starts with the genetics of the trees that produce beans. In cocoa beans, genetics play a very important and determining role for the flavour of the beans. Flavour varies wildly based on the different types or families of trees that the fruits come from. Up until now, our knowledge of the link between genetics and flavour has been anecdotal and very general. The scientific community has traditionally been focused on productivity increases in cocoa, and defining “quality” as a productivity measure (for example the cocoa butter content in percentage), whereas the less tangible “flavour” aspect has been largely ignored. Or, worse, it has been left up to cocoa producers to define whether they had “flavour” cocoa or not. Unsurprisingly, many producers and their organizations and governments claim that their cocoa is “flavour cocoa”, many with little evidence except for an emotion that their particular “terroir” ought to provide for “flavour cocoa.”

Indulgence or Therapy?

A square of dark chocolate implies many things in today’s popular consciousness.

Some words that come to mind:

• Indulgence
• Sensuality
• Ecstasy
• Luxury
• Hedonism
• Pleasure

And yet, recent studies show that people who regularly consume a modest quantity of dark chocolate are healthier for it! Perhaps this idea goes against the very mentality that attracts many of us to splurge on a bar of chocolate. Perhaps if the secret got out that dark chocolate was indeed “health food” of a sort, we would no longer feel the indulgent allure that compels us to savor each taste of dark chocolate. I doubt it...