What makes a luxury chocolate

Chocolate is called in the modern age as  “food of the gods.” But the fact remains that  it has  4,000 years of history. Unlike modern times, it was actually consumed as a bitter beverage. Researchers  have found evidence that it was produced by pre-Olmec cultures living in present-day Mexico as early as 1900 B.C. The ancient Mesoamericans who first cultivated cacao plants found in the tropical rain forests of Central America fermented, roasted and ground the cacao beans into a paste that they mixed with water, vanilla, honey, chili peppers and other spices to brew a frothy chocolate drink.

Olmec, Mayan and Aztec civilizations in South America found chocolate to be an invigorating drink, mood enhancer and aphrodisiac, which led them to believe that it possessed mystical and spiritual qualities. The Mayans used to worship Quetzalcoatl, a god of cacao. They reserved chocolate for rulers, warriors, priests and nobles at sacred ceremonies.

When the Aztecs began to dominate Mesoamerica in the 14th century, they craved cacao beans, which could not be grown in the dry highlands of central Mexico that were the heart of their civilization. The Aztecs traded with the Mayans for cocao beans, which were so coveted that they were used as currency.  By some accounts, the 16th-century Aztec emperor Montezuma drank three gallons of chocolate a day to increase his libido.

In the 1500s, Spanish conquistadors such as Hernán Cortés who sought gold and silver in Mexico returned instead with chocolate. It was the Spanish who added  sugar and cinnamon to Chocolate. Time passed the chocolate become sweetened but one thing remains  unchanged: it is still a delectable symbol of luxury, wealth and power. Chocolate was sipped by royal lips. In Europe to begin with Spanish elites who could afford the expensive import. Gradually it sppread among the royalty of other European kingdoms.

Spain managed to keep chocolate a savory secret for almostt  a century, but when the daughter of Spanish King Philip III wed French King Louis XIII in 1615, she brought her love of chocolate with her to France. The popularity of chocolate quickly spread to other European courts, and aristocrats consumed it as a magic elixir with salubrious benefits. To slake their growing thirst for chocolate, European powers established colonial plantations in equatorial regions around the world to grow cacao and sugar. When diseases brought by the European explorers depleted the native Mesoamerican labor pool, African slaves were imported to work on the plantations and maintain the production of chocolate.

 Dutch chemist Coenraad Johannes van Houten should be given credit of making chocolate affordable to the commoner. In 1828, he  invented the cocoa press, which revolutionized chocolate-making. The cocoa press can squeeze the fatty cocoa butter from roasted cacao beans, leaving behind a dry cake that could be pulverized into a fine powder that could be mixed with liquids and other ingredients, poured into molds and solidified into edible, easily digestible chocolate. The innovation by van Houten ushered in the modern era of chocolate by enabling it to be used as a confectionary ingredient, and the resulting drop in production costs.

Chocolate bar the modern avatar of chocolate , which is adorable to young and old alike across the globe, is comparably a new phenomenon. In 1847,  J.S. Fry & Sons in United Kingdom created the first solid edible chocolate bar from cocoa butter, cocoa powder and sugar. In the year 1875, Henri Nestle invented the process of condensing milk , he joined hands with a chemist named Daniel Peter. Both of them succeeded  in making chocolate with condensed milk, cocoa powder and sugar. It was beginning of milk chocolate. around the same time Rodolphe Lindt’s  invented conching machine, which was able to produce chocolate with a velvety texture and superior taste, and other advances allowed for the mass production of smooth, creamy milk chocolate on factory assembly lines. You don’t need to have a sweet tooth to recognize the familiar names of the family-owned companies such as Cadbury, Mars and Hershey that ushered in a chocolate boom in the late 1800s and early 1900s that has yet to abate.

People world  over are fan of chocolate but  Americans consume more chocolate than any other nationals, on an average, an American consumes 12 lbs. of chocolate each year.  If we talk about global consumption, the market is as big as  $75 billion per year.

We, in India, grown up with Cadbury, which gave us taste English style caramelised milk chocolate loaded with sugar. Why this kind of chocolate is popularised in India ? May be because we have a taste for over-sweetened  mithais. All this kind of conditioning  has mmade us to restrain to experiment with other kind of chocolates. But this hardly matters now because cocoa is  very expensive these days so most of the mass scale produced commercial chocolate brands do not use much cocoa. Kit Kat, Snicker or even a Mars Bar is not the chocolate covering -it is non chocolate stuff inside.

Real chocolate is like fine wine, which is why it falls in a completely different category. In fact, the parallels with wine are striking. The cocoa bean is a agricultural product, its' quality varies from season to season and region to region. for example Ghana produces reasonable quality chocolate while Congo does not, Chocolate in Chuao in Venezuela is better than chocolate from any where else in the country.

But unlike wine, chocolate is not a  first world product as  no cocoa grows in Europe. The general thumb rule is that a first world product is always spoken in terms of terroir. (Burgundy for wine, Perma for ham and Kobe for beef. So the main centres  for Chocolate are in Begium, France and Switzerland. And the heroes are so called artisanal brands, most of which are really fully industrial or subsidiaries of conglomerates. Valrhona is owned by the giant Bongrain . goodiva is now owned by the Turkish Yildiz holdings. Suchard is owned by Mondelez, a multinational company which now owns  Kraft, Cadbury's and Kool-Aids. Even so called hip brands like Max Brenner, famous in USA and Australia are a part of global giants, Max is a subsidiary of Strauss Group, an Israeli food giant. Royce, with over 40 stores abroad and more in its native Japan is a large company which sells drinking water, coffee, crafts and even Insurance. None of this to say that the luxury chocolate brands make bad chocolate but just to point out that these days, they are much more in marketing and packaging as Mars and  Hershey. and image alone can not be guarantee for quality.

So what should one look for in luxury chocolate? To me these qualities : like good wine the chocolate should interpret the flavor of bean and creativity in fillings, delicacy in construction and the dark taste of good chocolate. one has to remember that the overwhelming taste of commercial chocolate is  sugar and milk. While real chocolate should ideally have no milk and much less sugar, gloss and fragrance, it should have some fruity notes.

In India ITC have started manufacturing a brand of chocolate Fabelle, which takes care of all these element. To begin with, they are marketing only in ITC chain of hotels, the chocolate is close to artisan kind stuff, it is to be seen that how the chocolate lovers take it.