Quality is the "knife-edge" of experience
- Robert Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

What makes something more pleasurable or of higher quality than other things? A highly subjective question, one might note. So it is with gourmet food. Flavour (here defined as the “sensation produced by a material taken in the mouth”) at the end of the day is whatever the individual prefers; although getting to quality food or fine flavour, has its rational elements: One can argue that the raw materials are better selected, that the process of making the food was more elaborate and/or intelligent and the presentation was made with the utmost care. But invariably “gourmet food” has its romantic element. It’s simply about “being in the moment” and enjoying pleasurable sensations.

The gourmet food industry is about rationality in the process of making quality flavour food combined with a sort of Zen-like attitude to pleasure. And the two easily go hand in hand.

Hence, a really good wine distinguishes itself by being made by selected grapes, in the best of conditions (“terroir”) and using the best of processing and storage methods. And, indeed, it is very possible to distinguish a great wine from a very average wine, even for the layman. The taste is just more complex, with many notes, and it lingers for a long time. The smell is rich and stimulating. The experience in the moment of consuming a great wine is unique.

So it is with cheeses, beer, with coffee and with well prepared food in general. They all, as a common trait, use well selected raw materials, the processing is meticulous and the presentation is made with care. Gourmet food may not always be the right choice. Sometimes you just need to eat or drink something fast and easy to fill you up. Other, special, times you go for the quality experience.

Gourmet chocolate addresses those special times. The ultimate sensation from consuming great chocolate is unique and sensual. The process that goes into creating this sensation is systematic, detail oriented and focused on the best possible practices.

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.”

Hence for example the predicament of Ecuadorian cocoa producers. By far most of Ecuadorian cocoa is not “flavour” or “fine” cocoa judged by its taste and smell characteristics and the prices that chocolate makers are willing to pay for it. Some is very good, based on the genetic characteristics of the cocoa trees that they come from, but the trees that these beans come from are often planted together with non-fine trees (for insiders: The CCN 51 Forastero variety, for example). These producers mix the beans from all trees, fine and ordinary, and try to sell their mixed crop as “fine.”

The same can be said of Venezuelan producers. The majority of Venezuelan cocoa is “bulk” cocoa from very common and ordinary cocoa trees. (Typically these trees are referred to as “Forasteros” which is a rough genetic classification. Almost all Forasteros produce cocoa beans that are flat and astringent in taste, even when well fermented.) Surprisingly, in the farms that produce the well renowned “Chuao” or “Porcelana” cocoa beans, the trees are mixed. Some are fine and some are Forasteros and the farmers mix their beans. Also among the so-called fine trees, there is much variety as the cocoa trees tend to morph over time. The Chuao plantation, for instance, contains no fewer than 36 varieties (feno/genotypes) of cocoa, most of them fine. Only Hacienda San Jose seems to have focused on “purer” genetics on their farm in Northern Venezuela with their excellent “Ocumare” varieties. In all fairness, the Venezuelan random “mixes” often come out very well and “Chuao” is mostly stellar. But it is still random, and the industry of producing flavour cocoa beans still has a long way to go in streamlining and understanding their processes.

The term “Criollo” is often used to describe the trees that the best fine beans come from. In between Criollo and Forastero there is “Trinitario,” again a rough genetic term for more than 1,000 different types of cocoa trees that have a mix of Criollo and Forastero. Trinitarios are also considered fine. A special Ecuadorian Forastero-type tree feno/genotype is also considered fine (referred to as “Nacional Arriba”, but that again is often used more as a marketing term than an actual genetic description of one type of cocoa). That is the big picture. But in all of these terms there is a great amount of ambiguity and simply “black holes” in the knowledge of the link between genetics and flavour. Today, there are no “benchmark” 100% Criollos, except in fact for a few Xoco has identified in Central America and that we are carefully reproducing in clonal gardens for later evaluation. So in the strict sense, all trees that are not Forasteros are Trinitarios, some closer to the Criollo benchmark than others. And although it seems to be a common assumption that the closer a Trinitario is to being a Criollo, the better the flavour of its beans, it has never actually been proven. In Xoco we believe that there probably is some kind of imperfect correlation, but flavour at the end of the day is not only a rational phenomenon, but rather a sensual sensation, and there is room for great variability. We know that some types of Trinitario simply produce distinctly more interesting beans than others. An Imperial College Collection (ICS) 95 tree for example, tends to produce beans that are more ordinary and flat than most other Trinitarios and ICS clones. Exactly why that is so is debatable, and is still to be discovered by scientists. That leaves a lot of open space for “trial and error” which in a way is what Xoco did most of when we completed our selection of the best Trinitarios/Criollos of Central America. At the end of the day the organoleptic sensory evaluation of the quality of the beans is the most important and the most difficult. We went through what seemed like endless tests of micro-fermentations and “specialist evaluations” before we made our final selection.

Ambiguity in the debate about quality of flavour is often reinforced by the constant mix of marketing, science and pure emotional expressions. Numerous times I have heard producers or NGOs, even scientists, claim that “all Nicaraguan/Honduran/Guatemalan cocoa is fine!” If so, then why does it sell at “bulk” prices? Why do the beans taste and smell the same as African Forasteros? Some then become silent, others stubbornly go on to explain that it is better because of “terroir” borrowing the notion from French wine producers; that the soil and the particular weather conditions of a particular area makes for a particular flavour profile. While in wine that may have some truth, I’d rather stay out of that heated debate, it certainly doesn’t ring true in cocoa, as proven in scientific studies at the Cocoa Research Unit in Trinidad (Sukha et al) and elsewhere. Altitude doesn’t seem to have any noticeable influence either, as it does in coffee. At the end of the day, the claim of “terroir” is wishful thinking whereby by some magic trick suddenly a whole country’s cocoa becomes fine and can be sold at premium prices to gourmet chocolate producers. Alas, it would be nice and easy, but when it comes to quality, the easy way is often not the best way.

Some chocolate producers also seem prone to reach for the easy way to tap into the gourmet market. The easiest way of course, is simply to claim that your chocolate is gourmet. It may work in the short term, and it certainly adds to the general confusion about what quality is, but probably over time the consumers will start to be aware of what is better, and the chocolate producers affected by this increased awareness will understand that they will have to earn the right to call their product a quality flavour product and charge the premium price that goes with it. As an MBA, and with an admitted inclination towards the nerdy, I couldn’t help actually doing an analysis of the bean quality-price relation. With a sample of over 50 dark chocolate bars from different producers, all claiming high quality, I could satisfy myself with the result: The correlation is clear with an “R square” (a statistical concept describing how correlated two variables are) of 0.79, indicating a strong correlation between price and the quality of the beans used to produce the chocolate. The better the beans, the higher the price the consumers were willing to pay. In other words, consumers are indeed not fooled.

Other voices in the general debate about quality introduce the concept of productivity. While productivity certainly is interesting for the producers of cocoa (Xoco included), it does not have much to do with flavour. Some say that the fine tree varieties are less productive than the Forasteros. While some genetically “manufactured” trees like the CCN 51 without doubt are very productive, the reality in the Central American countryside is that the very common Forasteros grown there are not very productive. Average yields in Central America hover around 0.25 to 0.5 kgs. of dry cocoa per tree annually, pretty much the same averages as the Venezuelan “Criollo” plantations (to compare, a CCN 51 can easily produce 1.5 kgs. of dry beans per tree per year). While genetics without doubt has something to do with it, one important often ignored underlying reason for the low productivity in Central America and probably also in Venezuela, has to do with the farmers’ efforts. Cocoa tree productivity is for example very sensitive to light, and a good pruning every six month will provoke magnificent results. Many farmers, however, abandon their farms or do not take sufficient care of their plantations leading to poor productivity. By the way, Xoco’s varieties of trees have excellent productivity, well above 1 kg. of dry cocoa per year per tree. Great, but again, it doesn’t affect flavour.

Organic cocoa certainly seems desirable from a policy standpoint, but organic cocoa is not the same as fine or flavour cocoa. While Xoco emphasizes organic growing methods and we are starting a certification program for our outgrowers, there still isn´t evidence between flavour and the growing inputs. But better be safe than sorry, so we encourage outgrowers to adhere to organic practices, so consumers get fine flavour cocoa that is also organic.

While genetics is where it all starts, it is not the single key to the rich gourmet chocolate sensation which is the ultimate product of the painstaking, rational process. Growing, harvesting, fermentation, drying and storage all are important factors for the producers to extract the full flavour potential of the beans and avoid any flavour contamination. But, of course, the chocolate producers also have their processes that affect the end product. Some roast differently, some process longer than others, some use alkaline, some not, etc. But they are all dedicated professionals paying strict attention to the rational processes that go into the making of an excellent product that provide for that quality experience.

We at Xoco are lucky to be in the industry of creating sensual experiences. Everyone seems to enjoy excellent chocolate. And while we certainly don’t have all the answers, we are pioneers in an emerging industry. No one has done what we are doing. No one has focused solely on quality in flavour. No one has focused on stringent method in the process of getting there. And no one has, so far, focused on the volume that we are targeting. We hope that we are “creative disruptors” of the industry and that we can lead the way to what eventually is on the “knife-edge” of experience.