Snip from Alasdair Watson‘s hilarious, obsessive, chocolate-geeky writeup of a tasting event he attended at one of London’s finer chocolate shops:
If [Gerard] Coleman is to be believed, then I suspect the single most important thing I’ve learned is that the chocolate business is full of lying bastards out to exploit the public and flog inferior crap. This is not how he put it, and it’s not how he comes across (more of that in a minute), but over the course of the anecdotes about other chocolate makers, it’s very hard not to see a picture emerging. Coleman has apparently heard other people in the chocolate business say things like “you don’t have to like what you make”, something I (and he) find incomprehensible. As far as I’m concerned, if a person can’t stand behind their work, then they are a hideous shitehawk, and should be scourged with rusty barbed wire.
Here are a few things I know now that I didn’t know before: There are three kinds of chocolate beans: Criollo, Forastero and Trinitatio. Criollo is the original kind, the sort that the Spanish nicked off the Aztecs. This is the stuff that produces the all round best-flavoured chocolate. So, of course, most chocolate is made with the inferior Forastero, which is cheaper, and easier to grow in bulk. Trinitario has a variety of strengths, being a hybrid of the two. (Only 5-10% of the world’s cacao is good quality Criollo, or higher grade Trinitario, mostly single estate specialists.) But let’s talk about what we’re sold as “chocolate” in this country. (…)
Link (via Warren Ellis — happy belated birthday, Warren!)