What I learned at the Chocolate Festival

There's a lot more to chocolate than I realized

The Northwest Chocolate festival was last weekend. I finally decided to go and learned a lot about chocolate.

The cocoa tree grows in very humid regions of the world. Most of the world’s chocolate comes from West Africa, but South America is another major supplier. Like apple trees, there are different varieties, 13 different genetic varieties to be exact. They have different flavors and qualities. Some are more resistant to mold or produce more fruit than others. Unlike apples the fruit actually grows on the main trunk of the tree. There are usually around 35 fruit per tree. Because Cocoa trees need to be grown in shade, there’s another group of taller trees covering the cocoa trees providing a canopy.

The fruits are harvested and inside of those fruits are little pods and inside of those pods are a single seed, about twice the size of an almond. Those seeds are what chocolate is actually made of. They are fermented for 5 to 7 days, and the laid out to dry for another week. During the week of drying many small villages are putting them anywhere they can find to dry them out, patios, streets, etc. Finally they are roasted, and just like coffee beans the more roasted the more bitter the flavor will get.

There were many lectures you could go to which is where I got most of this information, however the other floor was full of people selling chocolates and giving away samples. I bought a couple of beautiful looking chocolates that looked like something from Willy Wonka.

I think the most interesting sample I had was vinegar made with the fruit the Cacao. One of the most unique tastes I’ve had in a while, it would be very good in a salad dressing.

Another new concept I was introduced to was single source chocolate, all the beans coming from the same place of origin. I tried pure Ghana, Jamaican and Philippine chocolate. When tasted right after each other you could tell there was different flavors and even texture. Some of them had a more earthy flavor, some more citrus. I also had 100% coco for the first time, which isn’t the best tasting but it helps you get a very good idea of the properties of any specific chocolate strain or region.

Chocolate produces well use these to blend different regions together to get a very specific taste. This is part of why you’re paying more for expensive chocolate. On the other hand, Hershey roasts everything as much as possible until they lose any interesting flavors and become very bitter, which requires a lot of sugar to counteract. That’s why you don’t see Hershey’s 70% coco bars out there, they would be very undesirable.

I ate a burrito before hand but unfortunate even on a full stomach I wasn’t able to handle too many samples. I had about 10 total and they averages the size of Tictacs. Some of the interesting ingredients in some of the chocolates were lemon grass, honey, potato chips, rosemary, pepper and many more I can’t remember.