Chocolate makers are using single-origin cacao beans to bring flavour alive

Chocolate companies buy huge batches of cocoa from thousands of farms from across the world

At Earth Loaf Artisan and Raw Chocolate’s factory in Mysuru, one can find the finest, organically-certified cacao beans sourced from Varanashi Farms in Karnataka being transformed into artisanal chocolates. 

Incorporating local herbs, spices and fruits, the founders, David Belo and Angelika Anangnostou, create single-origin, bean-to-bar chocolates such as mango, red capsicum and chilli chocolate, and coconut, ginger and gondhoraj bars. Together with other craft chocolate makers such as Mason & Co, Regal Chocolates and Indah Chocolate, the duo is at the forefront of the niche bean-to-bar movement in the country. 

While a majority of chocolate makers buy blocks of pre-made chocolate from bulk suppliers such as Morde to create their confections, artisanal chocolate makers work directly with farmers to source the right kind of beans and make their products from scratch. This gives them control over the entire process: sorting, roasting, cracking, winnowing, grinding, fermenting, tempering. 

Regal, which has plantations across 220 acres in the foothills of the Annamalai range, has taken this movement further by becoming India’s first tree-to-bar chocolate maker. 

“While in bean-to-bar, people get beans from someone else’s plantation, we breed our own trees,” says Karthikeyan Palaniswamy, who, along with his brother-in-law Manoj, came up with the baking bars, Regal, last year and the edible bars, Soklet, in February this year. 

Making chocolate from scratch completely transforms its taste. Usually, chocolate companies buy huge batches of cocoa from hundreds and thousands of farms from across the world. This cocoa then goes through the process of alkalisation to homogenise flavour and darken colour, as a result of which the finer nuances inherent to each farm’s beans are lost. 

“In artisanal chocolate, we are able to bring out the characteristics of the unique terroir in which the bean is grown,” says Luvin Paryani, founder, Indah Chocolate, which is based out of Wagholi, Pune, in Maharashtra. 

It is for this reason that these chocolates are produced in small batches. At both Earth Loaf and Auroville-based Mason & Co, it is believed that this process helps preserve the purity and quality of beans.

As Belo said in a previous article: “Every single batch has a human interaction… Every single batch is different because the weather dictates that. It is a living product which reflects the movement of nature.” 

Mason & Co also creates limited edition chocolates for festivals, while the boxes and wrapping at Earth Loaf are silk-screen printed by hand in Mysuru. 

The price starts at Rs 99 for a 40 gm bar and goes up to Rs 335, sometimes higher.