Daily Connect: Chocolate...Beyond the Taste

by Patrick Groneman
(Follow Patrick on Twitter)

Yesterday I was shopping in Whole Foods with my friend Max and happened upon a sample station for Grenada Chocolate, a delicious Organic, Direct Trade, dark chocolate bar that sells for between $3-4 here in the U.S.

Most of the time the sampling stations just have products to taste, and occasionally a little pamphlet with information will accompany them.  Wendy, our sampler, brought with her a Cocoa Shell and a little photo album of the cooperative factory in Grenada where the chocolate is made.

I hadn't previously known how chocolate was harvested, and, since she was involved in starting the cooperative factory, her knowledge of the process was intimate and she explained it all to me -- from shell, to beans, to roasting, to grinding, to mixing and molding.

Most of the time taste is our primary concern when buying food, if we're lucky enough to have a real diversity of food options, nutrition will play a part in our selection as well.   What is often relegated to intellectual fancy is how the product is made. What processes do the cocoa beans go through in order to arrive at the sweet, sweet taste?

Grenada makes their chocolate in small batches, from custom made machines, on the same grounds where the cocoa is harvested. They use Solar Energy to power their factory and the product is sold both locally within Grenada and internationally through direct trade.

Here's a video that follows around Mott Green, co-founder of the company, as he gives a tour of his factory and briefly explains his vision for the cooperative chocolate production.

All of this effort to produce a single, instantaneous moment of salivary satisfaction. So what's the takeaway?

Next time you bite into a piece of chocolate, see if you can taste more than just the sweetness and bitterness, can you taste the earth and sky, the roasting and the hands that packed it?  

Consider offering some gratitude to those who produced it. Consider the trees that bore it, and the earth that holds up all the trees.