There are many things about chocolate that stand out for me over the span of my life as I have gone from a novice lover of most things chocolate to a bean-to-bar fine chocolate maker. I remember clearly the first time I saw a cacao fruit in Tabasco State, Mexico. I recall my first smell of roasting cacao as I stirred it in a cast-iron skillet, and I will never forget the joy of tasting my first batch of European-style chocolate, as I slowly placed a spoon of the molten goodness into my mouth. If there is a heaven, it must include the feelings I associate with these experiences. Yet, there is one chocolate-related memory that came before all of these, and whose power still grabs hold of me today when people ask me what types of “candy bars” I make: In my early twenties, I was sitting in a university French course as the instructor asked us to name types of candy, the idea being that she would tell us what they were called in French, if there existed something comparable. Almost immediately I said “chocolate!” The response came just as quickly: “Non, le chocolat n’est pas un bonbon, mais il y a des bonbons qui se font avec du chocolat.” Even for those of you who don’t speak French, the response is probably clear enough; chocolate was apparently not a candy at all.
Still, despite the bluntness with which we were told of chocolate’s status as non-candy, I found myself shocked nonetheless that anyone would claim such a thing. I couldn’t imagine hearing those same words coming out of another person’s mouth ever again, and certainly not out of mine; chocolate obviously was a candy after all, French instructor opinion notwithstanding. That said, this seemingly obvious truth was not about to remain so clear to me for long.
For about a year from 2003 to 2004, I found myself in Lyon, France. The reasons for which I was there had nothing to do with chocolate at all, but upon finding the time to do a bit of reading about French gastronomy, I soon found myself wondering if I was perhaps in the ultimate fine chocolate country in the world. Unlike the national preferences in many countries—Germany, the US, Switzerland and Belgium included--the French prefer dark chocolate, and there are quite a few respected bean-to-bar chocolate makers to be found in France. True, the average French citizen is not necessarily familiar with the names of the makers of these fine chocolate bars, but the chance of accidentally running into their bars while shopping is not infinitesimal either. Taking this into consideration, I began to seek out many of what I read were the “greats” (to learn more about French chocolate makers read the last part of this post). I tried many bars from a variety of different companies, and over the course of the year I began to realize that though I had been convinced that I preferred milk chocolate, dark chocolate was quickly beginning to spend much greater amounts of time filling my thoughts. By the time I headed back home in early 2004, I had developed a taste for French dark chocolate that the variety of bars I was bringing back with me would not be able to satisfy for long.
Back in the US, I set to work trying to figure out if there were some websites devoted to French chocolate. I came across one called SeventyPercent.com, and soon absorbed much of the information there, from forum discussions on various chocolate makers, to the reviews of single bars themselves. I discovered that there were also Italian chocolate makers doing amazing things with cacao, and after finding a site from which to order French and Italian dark chocolate online, I ordered a number of the most respected bars, and then some others made by the same manufacturers. If the average, more easily available, French dark chocolate that I had already tried was a true eye opening experience, then this selection of the “best of the best” was a revelation. Each bar was so different from the next, and I was finally beginning to be able to taste various flavor notes in the chocolate, as I came to better understand what the French term terroir meant: that cacao from different regions had unique flavor qualities, even across manufacturers, that could be tied to climate, soil-type, nearby foliage, and naturally occurring microbes in the air and soil, not to mention other factors such as cacao variety and post-harvest processing. One might start to think that I am talking about wine rather than chocolate, and the confusion would be justified as there are clearly similarities between grapes and cacao on many levels. In fact, it is this complexity in cacao, and therefore chocolate, that so intrigued me, that I soon began to wonder about making my own chocolate and shortly thereafter started to experiment with the preliminary processes that eventually led to my first attempts at making European-style fine chocolate.
You may be wondering at this point how a blog post on the difference between chocolate and candy has turned into a story of my progression from chocolate lover to chocolate maker. Well, as I wondered how best to write a piece about the issue, I realized that virtually every reason that I could put forth was almost entirely subjective, as are many food-related opinions. Where the classification for chocolate ends and candy begins is a judgment call that is made by every individual, and I certainly cannot force my beliefs upon others. However, I think that my subjective experience, from seeing chocolate as candy for so much of my life, to finally seeing fine chocolate as a complex and delectable food quite far removed from candy…well, I thought that it might carry more weight than simply trying to come up with a set of objective criteria by which one might come to the same opinion. I thought that my experience might be more persuasive. As I think about why this might be, I realize that the definitions of candy and chocolate are both inextricably linked to time and place, and right here and right now in the US candy is often seen as cheap, sugar-filled, and bad for your health. That is not to say that all things called candies do have these qualities, but fine chocolate, for example, has none of them. It certainly isn’t cheap to manufacture, in its 70% and higher incarnations it is hardly what anyone would call sweet, and we are finding out more and more reasons why it is good for us. Of course, there is also the fact that chocolate has one of the most complex, if not the most complex, flavor profiles of any food in existence, certainly rivaling wine, cheese, coffee and tea in the quantity of volatile flavor components that can be ascribed to it. What candy can claim the same? Of course, I am careful to continually say “fine chocolate” because much mass-market chocolate, whether made in the US or elsewhere, has more in common with candy than the chocolate of which I am speaking. A warning sign would be a chocolate bar with sugar as the number one ingredient, no mention of the origin from which the cacao comes, no specific mention of cacao content, milk flavor that drowns out the cacao, and excess vanilla or even worse, vanillin, or other flavorings.
As for candy, I certainly think that it is possible for a culture to exist where candy or confections are taken so seriously, that they rise to the status of gastronomic triumph, and many would argue that confectioners in the French tradition have created items--some including chocolate and some not—that approach or fully attain this level, with confections so complex and delicious that they certainly deserve their own place next to the other great foods of the world. However, I have to believe that even in this case, there is something about the complex beauty of a masterfully-crafted fine dark chocolate that is lost when it is combined with other products. A world-class chocolate, at its best, deserves to stand on its own, and like a great wine, is not improved when combined with other ingredients, where the full depth of its bouquet could never be completely experienced. As always, there will be people who will disagree, and I can certainly appreciate other points of view, but still, if ever I were to ask someone to name their favorite type of candy, and “chocolate” came back as a response, there is a good chance that I might think to myself “Non, le chocolat n’est pas un bonbon, mais il y a des bonbons qui se font avec du chocolat.”
Best,
Alan McClure
