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(relaxing instrumental music)
(cacao beans rustling)
(sweet balls clanging)
- [Darin] If you meet someone and they say
that they don't like chocolate,
you need to look at them carefully.
- [Mikkel] Chocolate is kind of this crazy thing
that almost all people enjoy.
I really get a little bit scared
when I once in a while meet people that said,
"I really don't like chocolate. "
I'm like, what? (cicadas screeching)
- [Ed] It's just one of those things
that when you're among people that you want to be with,
it is something that you can share that is very special
that tells them you love and care for them.
- [Woman] There are no ways
to describe how happy chocolate makes me.
I mean, a chocolate. (woman chuckling)
- [Ed] Those chocolate bars that we remember,
they are made by large corporations.
Only a small percentage
of the actual piece is chocolate itself.
That's the bulk chocolate market.
You buy it everywhere.
On the other hand,
when we talk about craft chocolate,
we're talking about something very unique.
Its focus is on the flavor of the chocolate itself.
People are actually going and finding new beans
and new flavors and the uniqueness that comes with them.
(relaxing piano music) (trees rustling in wind)
- [Mikkel] Salon Du Chocolat is the biggest
chocolate show on Earth.
It's a crazy,
crazy six days with 50,000 people or more.
- [Kailash] Cocoa producers come to Paris,
chocolate makers come to Paris and everybody meets.
(audience cheering) It's an experience
of a lifetime. (audience applauding)
(woman speaking in foreign language)
(audience applauding)
(Susumu speaking in foreign language)
(leaves rustling in wind)
(relaxing instrumental music)
(water trickling)
(upbeat instrumental music)
(cicadas screeching)
(birds chirping)
- I wanted to really show the world that chocolate comes
from Latin America,
from my neighborhood, from Honduras,
from the Mayan culture.
(cicadas screeching) (birds chirping)
I was born in Honduras.
I was born in a small village.
I grew up in the countryside.
In my backyard we had cacao trees.
When I was eight years old,
I was already selling Caramels in school.
Over a year I save up the money
and with my own money I bought a pair of shoes.
So I was very proud of that.
I grew up here and at the age of 11 we moved to the big city
and at 17 I moved to New York.
(vehicle horns honking)
I graduated as a fashion designer at Parsons School.
After that, I started practicing cooking.
I became a chef first.
I did a catering company and after that,
I decided that I wanted to open a retail shop,
starting with chocolate.
I never really associated the drinking chocolate
that I had when I was little with the chocolate bonbons,
because we used to call cacao drink.
It was only when I started the business in chocolate
and I realized that cacao was chocolate.
(Maribel chuckling) So anyway,
so it was a great discovery.
It really inspired me to do it more forcefully.
(paper bag rustling)
In Japan, we opened our first store in 2012 in Kyoto.
I want MarieBelle to expand all over the world.
One of the reasons why I wanted
to start the bean-to-bar company is because I wanted
to bring the cacao from Honduras.
I have been an ambassador of Honduras,
even with our title,
talking about Honduras and talking
about all the great things we have,
spreading the word.
So my main objective is that the world gets to know more
about Honduras, who we are.
(relaxing instrumental music)
(birds chirping)
- My perspective on food, chocolate ingredients,
I think stemmed a lot from my childhood.
Growing up on a farm,
I wanted to work with my hands and I had always cooked.
And I decided at age 22
to become a chef.
I think for me, the turning point was
when I tasted Scharffen Berger's chocolate in San Francisco,
working at Citizen Cake.
Suddenly, a dark chocolate
became something really interesting, really nice,
had a flavor journey.
I remember my mouth lighting up all the way to the back
and tickling the back of my chin and I was like,
"Wow, this is something else. "
I was a distributor of Scharffen Berger chocolate since '99
here in Denmark and Scandinavia,
the first one outside of North America.
The summer of 2008,
we got our first chocolate,
first fermentation of our own beans.
2013, we started buying our first equipment.
When you work with chocolate,
you have machines working around the clock.
So I thought it would be nice to do it locally,
and then we started to make our own chocolate.
Growing part of the business is the so-called (indistinct),
where we sell our chocolate in bigger bulk boxes
and they transform it into filled chocolates,
put it in their pound chocolate or make chocolate ganache
for their tarts or use it in their desserts
for chocolate mousses or whatever.
It's a different thing than selling your final product
as we do it in the shops.
But here, we sell our final product
to be transformed into something else,
and that's great fun.
A boon came to us that I hadn't expected.
Thorsten Schmidt was the chef and Palle Sorensen
was the chocolatier.
They called me and said,
"We are actually prepping a dinner for all the astronauts
on the Space Station
and we wanna use your chocolate as the dessert. "
Okay, I mean,
every boy at some point is like,
yeah, I wanna be an astronaut.
This is better.
My chocolate goes up there.
The chocolatier, he created these beautiful,
they looked like meteorites made from hard chocolate.
And inside each of these small meteorites,
he had a personalized message.
Circling around the Earth,
eating really good chocolate
and having a beautiful little message from back home,
I like that part.
I have a name that we are one
of the best chocolate makers in the world.
(upbeat instrumental music)
- The taste of the consumer has changed.
In the past people used to buy a bar of chocolate
and just eat it.
Oh it's chocolate, not thinking.
You know, it was just a flavor of chocolate.
Now people eat slower and they wanna taste.
- There is a disconnect between the farmer
and me as a chocolate maker who wants to use the cacao,
because no one asked the farmer to make a better product.
They asked the farmer to make a cheaper product.
- Farmers are sometimes tired, giving up,
and that's the problem that if we don't encourage the farmer
to coming to the table and to buy directly from the farmer,
we could disappeared.
(Susumu speaking in foreign language)
- Yes.
(Susumu speaking in foreign language)
(chocolate trickling)
- A lot of chocolate makers before
would have never seen a cocoa farm
because you don't necessarily need it.
But if you want to understand that product,
if you want to see what it can be at its maximum,
you have to go to the root,
you have to go to the farm.
(birds chirping) (relaxing instrumental music)
(cicadas screeching)
- [Joe] It was in places like these
that cacao was first consumed.
(relaxing pan flute music)
(indistinct community chatter)
Cacao was first domesticated in what is now Ecuador
in the upper Amazon.
Thousands of years ago,
cacao was considered a very valuable possession
and was used as currency in exchange for goods.
It was in Mesoamerica
that it became a chocolate drink called Ka'kau,
which the Maya consumed every day.
For the Aztec,
the Ka'kau drink was consumed exclusively
by the Royal Court,
upper classes and the army.
They preferred it cold and served it only
at special ceremonies.
Legends say that Emperor Montezuma drank large quantities
of chocolate because it was considered a potent aphrodisiac.
(woman giggling)
Soldiers always carried cacao and used it
to boost their stamina in battle.
With the boom of colonialism,
cacao could not remain hidden for long.
(sea birds squawking)
(indistinct community chatter)
Recognizing its high value,
the Spaniards quickly seized all the cacao they can find.
(boots thudding on deck)
And so cacao beans made their way to Europe.
Cacao's healing qualities made it very popular.
Back then, it was still something only the rich could enjoy,
and enjoy they did,
especially the French aristocracy.
(chains clanging)
The demand grew for sugar to sweeten the cacao drink
and more and more slaves from Africa were shipped
across the ocean to work on the cacao and sugar plantations.
(cicadas screeching) (whip cracking)
With the start of the Industrial Revolution,
cacao growing and chocolate production evolved
at an accelerated pace.
Coenraad van Houten's cocoa press would create a smoother,
better tasting and more affordable cacao powder.
Only 20 years later, in England,
J. S. Fry & Sons created the first molded chocolate bar.
(children humming in delight)
In 1875, two Swiss gentlemen,
Daniel Peter and to Henri Nestle added powdered milk
to the chocolate mix and created milk chocolate.
The creamy, less bitter
and magical melt-in-your-mouth texture of chocolate
was the result of Rodolphe Lindt's accidental invention
of the conching process.
(doorbell chiming) (children humming in delight)
(crunching into chocolate)
(tree leaves rustling)
In the 20th century,
Africa would ultimately grow the vast majority
of the world's cacao.
(relaxing instrumental music)
And since then,
chocolate has become the world's favorite food.
(chocolate trickling)
(rumbling chocolate exploding)
Today, Cacao is consumed everywhere in the world,
but it only grows in the little belt of 20 degrees north
and south of the equator.
(relaxing instrumental music) (birds chirping)
(vehicle humming)
(cicadas screeching) (birds chirping)
(vehicle humming by)
(foliage rustling)
(men speaking in foreign language)
(Susumu speaking in foreign language)
(cicadas screeching) (birds chirping)
(camera shutter clicking)
(Dr. Wilbert speaking in foreign language)
(Maria speaking in foreign language)
(foliage rustling)
(birds chirping) (cicadas screeching)
- This collection is the world's largest
and most diverse assemblage of cocoa varieties
in the public domain.
It really is a Noah's Ark of the different varieties
of cocoa that you can capture from around the world.
(birds chirping)
Theobroma grandiflorum, which is a wild type.
And Theobroma Cacao,
which is the domesticated type.
(birds chirping) (cicadas screeching)
(Darin inhaling deeply)
It smells really nice. - Yeah.
- Most things in nature try to form a hexagon.
A cacao, everything is in five.
So it's not the most efficient shape,
but that's the shape that cacao takes.
- So this is how life continues.
It starts with when it produces a flower bud which opens in
a few days.
And if it's pollinated,
the flower retains.
If not, within a day or two the flower will drop.
You will get some small shells being produced.
And as the shell develops,
getting bigger and bigger,
eventually it matures into a green pod
which may take about five months, they ripen.
(birds chirping)
(cicadas screeching)
- You need a very small fly to get into the flower
for the pollination.
One of the ways to secure there is enough
of the small flies around the tree is
to throw the pods around the trees.
So that goes for as a fertilizer and as an ambient
for the small flies that we so badly need here.
(cicadas screeching) (flies buzzing)
(cicadas screeching) (birds chirping)
- Perhaps it's fitting that we,
from our underworld feel a little bit
of the logistic nightmare that a country like this faces
on a daily basis,
physically, actually feeling the work that goes
into getting us the good chocolate.
So better understanding the price I actually pay,
you could say.
(cicadas screeching) (birds chirping)
(relaxing piano music)
- When I saw my first cacao tree,
I looked at it and said,
"Whoa, this is really a weird tree. "
The pods, the fruit is not growing out
on the branches like any normal fruit tree.
It's growing on the main trunk
and this trunk is decorated with these pods,
sometimes jammed together if its productive tree.
(water trickling) (relaxing instrumental music)
(cicadas screeching) (birds chirping)
(Susumu speaking in foreign language)
(cacao crunching open)
- [Ed] Pulp varies in its flavor.
It is always sweet.
It is always a little bit tart, fruit tart.
(Susumu speaking in foreign language)
- [Ed] There is nothing better than
if you're out in the field,
you break it open maybe on a rock and you suck the pulp,
and it is so delightful, so refreshing.
- People think that when you crack open a cocoa pod,
the beans inside are brown and looks like chocolate.
Or worse yet,
they think there are chocolate bars inside.
(flies buzzing) (birds chirping)
(Maria speaking in foreign language)
(humming in delight)
(Maria humming) (child whining)
(people laughing)
(relaxing piano music)
- The first time you bite into a cocoa seed,
you bite it and you spit it out over there
and you understand evolution now.
And you begin to realize that that tremendous bitterness
and astringency, especially,
of the raw cocoa off the tree is
what allows the propagation of the species.
(birds chirping) (cicadas screeching)
(relaxing piano music)
(tree crunching through soil)
(metal knife clanging)
(thudding of knife on cocoa)
- This is a bean that's infected
with witches' broom disease.
It's like a cancer where you have uncontrolled cell division
and cell growth at the actively growing points.
(birds chirping)
- Sometimes you'll get a necrosis forming.
You'll have a slight yellowing.
Sometimes the necrosis is not as big as this.
It could be much smaller.
You see, you may think that your pod is good,
but when you cut your pod it's gone.
All the beans are gone inside.
- You can see the damage the fungus causes,
you see it?
So this part is not usable.
It sort of liquefies the beans inside
and it actually smells like coconut, smell it.
- Yes, rancid. Rancid coco. - Like rancid coconut.
- If a pest or a disease comes,
the likelihood is that they can be affecting all
of the plants.
And we have seen cases in cocoa where a whole production
in the country is nearly wiped out over a year or two.
(birds chirping) (cicadas screeching)
(Allan speaking in foreign language)
(birds chirping)
- And you could see why it's called whitches' broom.
You see how all buds go out?
They get this kind of broom appearance.
- It looks like something evil, right.
(Darin speaking in foreign language)
Which is broom disease.
(Allan speaking in foreign language)
(Dr. Wilbert speaking in foreign language)
(Alfonso speaking in foreign language)
- No, no
they just put a hole for the juice, yeah.
(Alfonso speaking in foreign language)
(foliage rustling) (cicadas screeching)
- Cocoa is a tree.
Before you recover the production,
you have to prune it,
you have to wait for it to start producing fruits again.
It's very different than a C crop that you can decide that,
okay, you plant it in this field this year.
The following year you plant it in that other field.
Cocoa, you adopt a tree for 30 years.
You have to take care of that tree but you have
to make the best of what you
have made the decision on planting.
(cicadas screeching) (birds chirping)
- There is very little control.
There is very little consistency
in what's actually growing out there.
You go into a farm,
you will see how many different varieties were growing
on many of the farms.
Any time you have a lot of different genetics growing
in an area of cooperative,
and it changes every time the flavor of the cacao.
Everything that's important for consistent flavor quality
is almost impossible to control.
(Maria speaking in foreign language)
- 75% of the world's cocoa production comes
from West Africa.
The rest of the world only produce 25%
There are only few countries in the world
that produce fine or flavor coco.
95% of the world's cocoa production is referred to as bulk.
Now, the fine flavor are very unique in that,
in addition to the chocolate flavor,
they also produce a range of ancillary flavors
such as fruity and floral and earthy
and spicy and caramel and all these various nodes.
(Dr. Wilbert speaking in foreign language)
(relaxing instrumental music) (wind howling)
- Today we're very concerned
about the impact of climate change,
particularly in cocoa.
(Dr. Wilbert speaking in foreign language)
(rain trickling)
(thunder rumbling)
(trees rustling in wind)
(Maria speaking in foreign language)
(relaxing instrumental music)
(Dr. Wilbert speaking in foreign language)
- A lot of energy has been spent in developing varieties
that have resolved certain issues.
(birds chirping) (relaxing instrumental music)
(Dr. Wilbert speaking in foreign language)
(cicadas screeching) (birds chirping)
(Allan speaking in foreign language)
(cicadas screeching)
- The diversity of flavors is greater in the Americas
because the genetic locus of this plant,
the source of its greatest diversity
is South America,
kind of that back country,
the backside of Ecuador,
where Ecuador and Peru and Columbia,
a little bit of Venezuela and Brazil all come together
in the headwaters of the Amazon Basin.
You get to see the diversity
that the original Mayan-Toltec God,
Quetzalcoatl blessed us with
when Quetzalcoatl gave the seeds of cacao to mankind
in all of its glory and diversity.
- You never can tell what will find
when you look at a cocoa pod.
I may think it's a Forastero and when I cut it open,
I'm surprised, it's a Criollo because the beans are large
and plump and have no pigment.
It's just like with people.
You meet people,
they look like something,
but when you get to know them,
it's something totally different.
It's unique and every experience is rich.
(relaxing instrumental music)
- We are beginning to understand that a lot of the variation
in flavors that you get has a genetic basis to it.
- Now we're using that knowledge in the cocoa world,
in country, to breed enhanced material
for disease resistance, productivity
and flavor.
(Dr. Wilbert speaking in foreign language)
(cicadas screeching) (pruning shears clipping)
(Mayumi speaking in foreign language)
(cicadas screeching) (foliage rustling)
- When you visit an estate,
you will realize that there aren't any machines
that can easily go through and pick pods and prune trees.
(trees rustling)
(Juan speaking in foreign language)
- I think that fieldwork is generally not looked
on as being attractive or just not desirable,
and skilled labor is disappearing.
(foliage rustling) (cicadas screeching)
(Juan speaking in foreign language)
(cicadas screeching) (foliage rustling)
- 99% of my production would be Nicaraguan cacao.
And one of the really great things about Nicaraguan cacao is
that it's not a wild or some kind of romantic story,
but it's still the unadulterated or good old stuff.
(Juan speaking in foreign language)
(Don speaking in foreign language)
(Juan speaking in foreign language)
(relaxing instrumental music)
- If we've worked with specific genetics,
more like wine,
like having a Cabernet, a Merlot,
if you tighten that genetic into Tewa,
the farmers would have something that was worth a lot more
for them as a product
and we would get a lot better cacao than what's out there.
(cicadas screeching) (cacao pod thudding)
(Elvin speaking in foreign language)
(Maribel speaking in foreign language)
(Maribel chuckling)
(Elvin speaking in foreign language)
- Okay. (Maribel chuckling)
(Adolfo speaking in foreign language)
(Elvin speaking in foreign language)
(cocoa pod thudding) (cocoa pod cracking open)
(Maribel speaking in foreign language)
(Elvin speaking in foreign language)
(cicadas screeching) (birds chirping)
(four wheeler rumbling)
(tractor rumbling)
- This is our fermentation facility.
This is a box that they've been using traditionally
for a long time.
This is fermentation day number five.
What we do is we check the temperature
of the fermentation process.
(relaxing instrumental music)
Okay, temperature,
50 degree Celsius and we check that on three or four points.
49 one one side.
We change it,
when the temperatures start dropping,
we give the cocoa a turn.
- And every two days we turn our cocoa.
We take the cocoa from the front and place it in the back.
That's one turning.
And then two days after that,
we'll bring it back to the front.
That's the second turning.
We usually use so that we develop as much heat as possible
within the box which is conducive to a good fermentation.
(Elvin speaking in foreign language)
(cocoa beans rustling)
(Maribel speaking in foreign language)
(Elvin speaking in foreign language)
(Maribel speaking in foreign language)
(Maribel chuckling)
(Elvin speaking in foreign language)
(relaxing instrumental music)
- Cocoa production is science.
It's just about chemistry.
We believe consistency is important.
Many chocolate makers express that it's important.
And that has an element of science to it
which can't be any other way.
(cocoa beans rustling)
(Dr. Wilbert speaking in foreign language)
(Adolfo speaking in foreign language)
- People are fermenting the cacao
but they were making it to an industrial grade kind
of mildness, blandness,
and not fermenting to enhance beautiful fruity acidities,
or tannins or body.
That was actually like,
no, no, no, no,
you don't wanna go down that way.
A good dark chocolate,
that's a mild, nutty chocolate.
That's the flavor perspective for that chocolate.
Who invented this kind of mild and nutty thing
that's the only way we can go?
(cocoa beans rustling)
Provoking people into understanding or asking
what is this about,
I created the bad fermentation bar.
The bad fermentation bar is one of my favorite cacaos
which is really difficult to ferment
to what would be industrial standards.
Nestle would never buy these beans.
They would say, no, no, no,
you can press cocoa butter out of them.
That's the best to use them for.
And for me it's one of our top three chocolates.
(forklift rumbling)
(cocoa beans rustling)
- Because fermentation and drying is so powerful,
we're not as dependent on good or bad years.
Genetics is about 30 to 40% of the final quality
of the cacao.
The fermentation and drying,
so we'll call it post-harvest process,
is about 60 to 70%
So you can say that genetics is the potential,
but the fermentation, its drying,
its the expression of this genetics,
it's the materialization of this genetics.
And it's basically about breaking down the proteins
into smaller pieces and making them available
for the chocolate maker to work with.
(cocoa beans rustling)
(relaxing piano music)
(Susumu speaking in foreign language)
- A lot of people are experimenting
with you fermentation types and different genetic varieties
and specializing in genetic varieties.
This is the typical seven-day fermentation.
This is a typical 7-day fermentation.
Across there, we have a five to six-day fermentation of TSH.
So it depends on what our clients wants
and the feedback that we get from them.
(beads grinding)
(Elvin speaking in foreign language)
- By modifying the length of the fermentation
and the amount of oxygen that we add
and the way that we dry,
we can develop flavors from the same genetics
and widely the different directions.
(cocoa beans rustling)
(Dr. Wilbert speaking in foreign language)
(Adolfo speaking in foreign language)
(machine humming)
- So after the drying process and the beans are dry,
they come into our polishing room.
The pulp of the fruit dries out on the drying house.
And what we do is sprinkle it with a little bit
of water so the outside of the bean gets a little bit wet,
and the dry pulp gets soft.
And this machine turns around and let the beans rub
to each other and gives it a even and smooth surface,
so the dry pulp gets off.
- In the old days,
the ladies used to dance on the wet cocoa beans
to remove the pulp.
This machine does that equivalent.
So this is like dancing the beans.
(upbeat instrumental music)
- This machine separates the big beans from the small beans,
so single beans, big beans,
smaller beans, flat beans and rubbish.
(beans rustling)
What we sell the client are the big, even beans.
(beans rustling)
(upbeat instrumental music)
(machine rumbling)
(machine vibrating)
(beans rustling)
- Ensuring consistency in any agricultural product
is a challenge.
Cocoa is a crop,
so every year that it will be produced,
it will be different than the year before.
- When I first realized all that went
into creating chocolate,
all the possible variables,
the knobs you can turn to affect how it would come out,
physically, as well as flavor wise,
it almost created an incredulity
that anything could possibly come out the same way twice.
It is much to the credit of generations of cocoa farmers,
as well as engineers and operators in plants
that it comes out as consistently as it does.
(cocoa beans rustling)
50 years ago,
the cocoa bean supply was something on the order
of two million metric tons globally.
Today, it's about four and a half million metric tons.
So there's a lot more cocoa beans that are being produced.
That's been driven by the demands and needs
of the large multinationals.
The cocoa bean trade in the world is not as simple as,
here's the price. (Ed chuckling)
or here's what I wanna pay.
It is a commodity interesting enough to attract speculators.
The farmer will sell his or her beans to a group locally
that will be the collector.
They go to individual farms
to buy the beans from the farmer at farmgate.
And that's a phrase that's used commercially
in the supply chain.
Farmgate price, that's what the farmer gets
for their cocoa beans.
(bell chiming)
(Alfonso speaking in foreign language)
(cicadas screeching)
- If anything happens in the middle,
it's usually the person at the beginning
of the value chain that takes the hit.
That is still true of chocolate trade today,
except, it's generally not as true
for our craft chocolate bean suppliers.
Because under those conditions,
supply contracts are usually negotiated at a fixed price
for the upcoming season,
with an expectation of what the basic market is going to be,
but a fixed price that lets the farmer count
on what they can bring in.
(Alfonso speaking in foreign language)
(birds chirping) (cicadas screeching)
(Susumu speaking in foreign language)
- Tasting cocoa paste is a little bit like getting slapped
in the head, (Ed chuckling)
you'd rather not have that happen to you.
But once you're trained,
the unsweetened chocolate allows you to see all
of the flavors that are present and possible
in the cocoa bean.
- I was more a taster of finished product,
and eventually I learned to taste the beans
associated to the finished product.
I learned that but it didn't come natural.
(relaxing piano music)
(speaking foreign language)
(man speaking in foreign language)
(Maribel speaking in foreign language)
(birds chirping)
- If I only got samples shipped to me,
I would have a limited understanding on
how my raw material is created,
and I would have no influence on it.
A very big part of my success with my chocolate comes
to my understanding of the raw material.
- It's just cocoa now.
So it's a roasted grinded cocoa.
We've prepared it in a laboratory.
No sugar added.
It's just the pure stuff.
- That's one of the arts that when we
have the chocolate makers here at our factory,
the real interesting thing is when they think chocolate,
when they see and taste our beans,
because then they see the extension
and then you can really talk about the value chain
and the symbiosis between the raw material
and the final product.
- Any particular thing that stood out?
- This had a good, bitter complexity.
It was the most nutty for me of the ones we tasted.
It had some virility,
especially in the nose.
Not so much in the flavor,
but the nose had really nice virility.
Again, higher stringency and more bitterness.
They are both the highest and bitternest in stringency,
but normally I like to go for that because,
again, then I have something to work with in the factory.
If it's not there,
you cannot add it. - I know.
- But I can remove it. - You can always take it out.
- So for my way of making chocolate,
these two were probably the ones that made most sense.
- Yeah, two and three.
- Two and three, yeah.
- Okay.
(relaxing piano music) (birds chirping)
- Every bean has a potential to be something.
And the job of the farmer,
the job of every person along the cocoa value chain
that handles that bean is to facilitate the expression
of that flavor potential.
(truck rumbling)
- Roughly 80% of what happens to the final flavor
of a fine chocolate is generated by the farmer.
- The hardest work
in chocolate is
bringing this final product,
the cocoa bean.
That's the hardest work.
Where you make the most money is
when you turn this cocoa into chocolate.
(soft instrumental music)
(Dr. Wilbert speaking in foreign language)
- At the end of the day,
cocoa production is about economics.
It's about being able to sell your crop at a decent price.
To be able
to live off just growing cocoa is a big challenge.
There are a lot of people involved
in the value chain of cocoa,
and unfortunately the cocoa producers are the ones
that in many cases make the least amount
of profit on the crop.
- Cocoa farmers do not want their children
to be cocoa farmers.
It is a job that has kept the family alive,
but its not been something
that it frequently causes the family to prosper.
That needs to change.
(relaxing piano music)
- We're a lot more educated than the average farmer
and I think modern farmers are starting
to educate themselves more so they are not taken advantage
of by downstream processors.
We're more headstrong than our forefathers.
With the advent of social media and the internet,
we are more able to research things that are going
on across the globe and see what's going on
and hear what's going on directly from other farmers
and other processors. (cocoa beans rustling)
- And we also need to encourage the farmer
and let them know how good they're doing
because all they see is,
how much are they gonna pay me for it?
(birds chirping)
I wanted to start buying cacao from women producers.
I feel that women need to be more empowered,
and especially the women farmers.
They live in a community,
very macho community and I feel that we all need
to give them some hope and independence,
give them the opportunity to have a business.
A lot of these farmers never ate chocolate.
If you don't have the taste,
you don't have the passion too.
I started bringing them samples of the chocolate.
Now they know how a certain bean tastes
and how another bean tastes from different regions.
- There is a disconnect between experience in cocoa
as chocolate at the very source of where cocoa is produced.
There's no appreciation of cocoa as food.
And that connection is only made
by having farmers taste chocolate made from their beans.
(Mikkel speaking in foreign language)
- You need to meet that person that is making that for you
because without that person growing that plant,
you can't do this part.
- I think a chocolate master has to have so much curiosity,
so much curiosity to want
to understand the ingredients they work with
and to have a lot of creativity.
(birds chirping)
- I like coming into the factory, it's bustling.
Things are happening. Things are running.
Things I'm moving, it's life.
(machines humming)
I don't see myself as a chocolatier,
even though I think that term is also used for me.
Sometimes I see myself as a chocolate maker.
I work for the raw material,
creating something which can be turned into something else
by a chocolatier or even on its own.
When we make chocolate,
the process more or less goes like this.
We start by quality control of beans.
Then we roast the beans.
(machine humming) (beads clanging on metal)
- When you taste cocoa,
raw cocoa, it doesn't taste like chocolate,
because we need the roasting
to really activate these amino acids and these peptides
that are available in a well-fermented bean.
(cocoa beans rustling)
That's where the chocolate flavors come.
(machine humming)
(cocoa beans clanging on metal)
(upbeat piano music)
- After roasting the beans,
we crack them and we winnow them,
take away the shell as round beans.
(upbeat instrumental music)
(cocoa bean shells rustling)
Then we take the nibs or just the cracked cocoa bean pieces
and we take them into our refiner and we refine them.
(liquid splashing)
Here, we will add sugar
and refine the sugar alongside the beans
and add cocoa butter for that chocolate.
If it's a milk chocolate,
we would also add milk powder at some point.
(cocoa butter trickling)
When we have the particle size we like,
we move the chocolate into our conch where we will work
with the consistency and the flavor of the chocolate.
We have the old demon conch,
the longitudinal conch where we spend somewhere
between one and a half and three days,
or even more,
refining the texture and the flavor of the final chocolate.
That's very few who does this.
It's the original way of making chocolate.
Then the next step in the process would be tempering.
So we temper the chocolate to get the right crystallization
of the cocoa fats.
Molding.
That is where we decide whether it should be 25 gram mold
or 100 gram mold.
Whichever size we're making,
this one will put it into the molds and run it down the line
into the shaking table where air bubbles will go
to the top and disappear.
(machine vibrating containers)
Then cooling and at the end packed.
If you have the craft and if you know what you're doing,
you can do super consistent flavor work
and you can use your desire to move this flavor
to different directions on purpose and not on luck.
What we do is such a different procedure
than making a bonbon, a praline,
like Mr. Es Koyama or MarieBelle.
Where they will take their history,
their ideas of flavor, country,
nationality, culture.
(relaxing instrumental music) (cicadas screeching)
(Susumu speaking in foreign language)
(plants rustling in wind)
(man speaking in foreign language)
(Susumu speaking in foreign language)
(knife thudding on board)
(Kanako speaking in foreign language)
(relaxing instrumental music)
(Susumu speaking in foreign language)
(upbeat instrumental music) (door rumbling)
- He always chooses the highest quality ingredients.
Making good chocolate is like cooking.
You need a good chef,
but you start with the best ingredients.
And he is obsessive about using the best ingredients.
(upbeat instrumental music)
(birds chirping)
- So you need chocolate for the rooms?
- Yes, we do. - Yeah.
- My first idea was that we were going to use this pollen.
- So it's a bee pollen? - Yeah, it is. It is.
It is from one of our farmers.
- Lots of different colors, it's really-
- It's like when you taste it,
the flavors of it,
it changes between which kind of color you get.
You can try and taste it.
(relaxing piano music)
- It's a very delicate taste.
So if we should use this,
we should probably put it in a white chocolate.
I think also because if we still can see the colors
in the chocolate,
this will be very beautiful too.
- The specialty about Mikkel's chocolate for me is
that it has,
the pure flavor is natural and the most thing for me,
for me the production,
the making of it is him and he's doing it local.
(upbeat piano music)
- Are we gonna get high from this?
- No, you're just gonna have fun.
- That's kind of disappointing.
- If you start feeling high,
it's because you have been smoking too much in your youth.
It's your brain that can remember.
- That's my youth.
That's a long time ago.
- Exactly. Exactly.
No, no,
you're not gonna get high.
Nothing, there's no THC.
There's nothing in it.
- You can take an exquisite heirloom
or award-winning cocoa bean and give it to all three
of these chocolate makers and they will come out
with a different product,
because it will be adjusted to their personality,
to their style,
to their belief in basic principles,
all of which are different.
(upbeat instrumental music)
- Getting ingredients from different cultures
and getting to know those cultures and why they love it,
that curiosity make me fall in love
with different ingredients,
and this is what make me fall in love with food.
(relaxing instrumental music)
It's always artisanal. It's basically handmade.
We do have some machines, mixers,
but we don't do any molded chocolate.
We do mostly cut by hand.
(ingredients rustling from tray)
I usually like to work with dark chocolate
or milk chocolate for the inside.
But when I try the dark chocolate with a matcha,
they just fight among each other.
So none of them taste good.
That's when we came up with doing it with white chocolate,
and it's perfect.
It doesn't make it so sweet because the matcha
has already a bitterness.
All of our ganashes are done
with pure ingredients, not extracts.
Do you see how beautiful the green is?
I love it.
This is when you use natural ingredients,
this is what you get.
(relaxing piano music)
When we mix all the ingredients,
we spread it on a frame.
Our frame is like a ruler,
so it needs to be not only perfectly square,
but also the height has to be all even.
Because if you don't do it like that,
then some ganache is gonna be higher and some lower.
It needs to be the same size.
We leave it overnight to dry.
And then the next day we come back
and then we cut it into little squares.
Once we have all these little squares is when we go
to the enrobing machine.
(machine humming)
After it goes through the enrobing machine,
it's wet, so you put the transfer sheet.
It is cocoa butter and food coloring,
and then he goes through the cooling tunnel.
So it takes about 10 minutes to get to the other side
and then the design is already there.
(relaxing instrumental music)
We only can make 10,000,
12,000 units a day.
The other companies are making a lot more
when they make it by machine.
But if I become worldwide,
I would keep that techniques for the ganache.
I think the flavor is much better
because the coating is not as thick.
- We meet a lot of customers and some would like chocolate
to be sweeter,
some would like the chocolate to be more intense.
You cannot make everybody happy,
but you can make what you like and present it
to the world and say,
this is what I like.
If you buy into me,
buy my stuff.
If you like the other stuff,
buy the other stuff.
(Susumu speaking in foreign language)
(relaxing instrumental music)
(chocolate splashing)
(upbeat instrumental music)
(molding trays clanging)
(door banging) - So I have four different
kind of beans.
- [Maribel] These are the beans I brought from Honduras?
- Yes.
She wants to know one to 100.
She have to know everything about this bean, this process.
If she think this is excellent,
she wants to share with everybody.
She has some kind of magic, I think.
(Chika chuckling)
- And this is only champagne ganache?
- Yes. - Very good.
- Actually, I like it with the dark
because it becomes too sweet. - Okay.
- What is the percentage of the-
- 70%
- Well, maybe it needs to be about 60%
- Okay.
- But that's why you can taste the champagne.
- Yes. - It's very good.
- So usually I can always detect with my tongue
whether it's where I want it to be,
but we always double check using the micrometer
to test the particle size of the chocolate.
I could have a bad day or it could not be me doing it.
So we know that getting it to this micron size,
which if you test our chocolate would be somewhere
around 12, 13 microns.
This is where we wanna go.
(upbeat instrumental music)
(Susumu speaking in foreign language)
(alcohol dripping)
(machine beeping)
(alcohol dripping)
(glass clanging)
(upbeat instrumental music) (machine humming)
(cicadas screeching)
- The importance of the design in chocolate,
both the wrapper and the mold we use
or you can say the finished chocolate bar,
is it's quite important, I think.
(machine humming)
I am Northern European.
I have made squares inside my bar so they're easy
to crack off and easy to share.
(relaxing instrumental music)
(packaging machine squeaking)
So we get the new gift pack with the World Medals on,
the European Medals on?
- Yeah. - That's gonna be really funky
to fold, do you wanna try?
- Yeah.
(people chuckling)
It's the cream we wanted, right?
Yeah, it's the cream we wanted.
- Yeah, it's the same color. - Not the white one
from the samples.
So what do you think?
- [Woman] Yeah, I think it's good.
- Yeah, that's good,
then we have the two different fermentations
in the middle and the white one in the middle.
Yeah, that's gonna be pretty awesome.
My experience through my adult life,
working with foodstuffs,
that if you can make something that looks nice
and is appealing and something that you wanna touch
and hold and it's pretty,
then you will help yourself in sales.
(relaxing instrumental music)
- Maribel always makes story with the design.
So it's not only design,
but when you look at it and they
have a behind the story.
(relaxing piano music)
- I like the idea of giving.
I like the people looking surprised when they open a gift.
I like the expressions when they open a box
of chocolates of MarieBelle.
They're not gonna say,
oh my God,
these are so good I'm gonna eat them.
But they're gonna see,
oh my God,
I love this and then as they start contemplating
all the drawings and that's what I love to see.
Of course, once they eat it,
they're gonna taste very good,
but I like that surprise expression of people.
(relaxing piano music)
(Maribel speaking in foreign language)
(assistant speaking in foreign language)
(Maribel speaking in foreign language)
(people speaking in foreign language)
(Maribel speaking in foreign language)
(assistant speaking in foreign language)
(people speaking in foreign language)
- I always think the design should also match the taste.
The ribbons are made in France.
It's a great cotton ribbon that we use for our blue boxes
and the printing is perfect.
I think I lived in France in another life.
I love the French style.
MarieBelle is a very classic, elegant brand,
beautiful packaging, gifty.
My hope always has been that when people open a box
of MarieBelle chocolates, are smiling.
When you enter the store,
you enter an experience.
You don't enter only a chocolate store.
It's great to eat a piece of chocolate
in a beautiful environment.
So when I created Cacao Market,
it is the same style,
sort of profound style,
but it's still that style that also brings you nostalgia.
- Chocolate is like a first date
that you keep having over and over and over.
You are taking your customer on a first date,
and you wanna have them come back for a second date
and a third date until they form a close bond with you.
And they'll leave all other chocolates
and come back to you always.
(Susumu speaking in foreign language)
(Naoto speaking in foreign language)
(Susumu speaking in foreign language)
(relaxing instrumental music)
- Our stomachs need food,
but our brain needs food too.
And I think the more you tell the customers history
of things or educate him about him eating just chocolate,
people are very open to learn.
And it's good to know the roots
because you learn to appreciate more.
On the box we tell the story where the cacao comes from
and then the story about making our own chocolate.
I also do a little poem per design.
So before they get it to eat it,
they have to do a lot of work reading.
(Dr. Wilbert speaking in foreign language)
(people laughing)
(all chattering)
- Cocoa chocolate is about people.
It's about making that connection.
Not only about the people who produce the cocoa
and the people who make the chocolate,
but the people who eat it and share it.
(relaxing instrumental music)
There's still a lot to learn.
I think that the chocolate consumers are still hesitant
in understanding what is a good chocolate.
- The biggest problems
in chocolate is actually making people understand
that it's not an industrial product you buy cheaply
in the supermarket.
And to do that,
you need to give people more value,
and you can do that, of course,
by saying, it's fair trade,
we help the poor little farmer,
as a little imperialistic way of making yourself feel good
and that's why you buy the chocolate.
I would rather say,
this chocolate has some inherent qualities.
(relaxing instrumental music)
- I suppose if we want consumers to buy a higher price
for their chocolate,
we should give them something more.
I mean, that would make sense.
We can ask them to pay more,
given the same product that they've always had.
When we get a higher price for our products,
then we can pay a higher price to our farmers,
but it has to be associated to quality.
- When we consume chocolate,
we have a very romantic idea that's our cocoa comes
from these tropical islands that are paradise.
And the reality is hard.
The pleasure that you have in eating it
and the hard reality
of its production often brings a mindfulness
to consuming that product
and caring that cocoa producers should be rewarded.
- This thing that we call craft or fine chocolate,
some chocolate bars cost as much as 12 euros, $15 US.
And that's okay because it is the emergence
and recognition that what the farmer does matters to taste.
(Susumu speaking in foreign language)
- I hope that our approach and because we succeed with it,
will make others do the same and then we will
have more people getting better pay
and more people getting better experiences,
focusing more on quality and stuff.
It's a big project.
You wanna change the world just little by little.
(foliage rustling) (cicadas screeching)
- The whole world needs to understand that anything
in the market has a beginning in the farm
and we need to respect our Mother Earth.
I wanna be an example
to all those young generations that come,
that anything is possible.
I feel that chocolate is a symbol
for all of us to have peace in the world.
(people speaking in foreign language)
- I make a luxury product,
something the world doesn't really need,
but it makes people happy.
So you have a lot of different emotions,
a lot of different things,
from poverty, slavery,
happy people, happy children,
and the other end.
It seems to me it should be easy to align if you want it to.
(relaxing piano music)
(lights clicking off)
(relaxing instrumental music)