Has Craft Chocolate Become Boring? | #PSC 222
OVERVIEW: Episode 222 of #PodSaveChocolate asks what to some might be a controversial question: Craft Chocolate? Boring?
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Episode 222
Yeah, I know the title is clickbait-y, but it worked and you’re here reading this. And, it’s the middle of the summer, it seems like a fun topic, and I’ve been incubating a draft for months. And, because Betteridge’s Law of Headlines:
Contributors to Wikimedia projects
Some Backstory
I was on a call with a colleague several years ago during which the question of whether it was possible to create a new style of craft chocolate came up.
It turns out the question is much less straightforward than it seems, and I have been working on an internally consistent, built from first principles classification system for chocolate ever since.
There are at least three lines of reasoning that need to be explored:
- What does it mean to be “craft” chocolate?
- What does “style” mean when it comes to chocolate? And is style synonymous with “type”?
- Why does it matter?
In What Ways Has Craft Chocolate Become Boring?
Since back in the late 1990’s when “bean-to-bar” chocolate leapt into the collective consciousness after Scharffen Berger opened its doors, the emerging craft chocolate industry has struggled to define itself, and one reason I prefer the broader term “specialty.”
Note the equivocation here: conflating “bean-to-bar” and craft. Are they synonyms?
This is an example of the challenges we, as an industry, face.
Much of the definition of craft chocolate is framed in opposition to industrial or “big” chocolate; craft chocolate is the opposite of whatever it is that big chocolate does.
- Big chocolate uses lots of ingredients that are not strictly necessary, so a lot of craft chocolate is made from only two, or at most three ingredients.
- Big chocolate uses a variety of blending techniques that are useful when consistent flavor, rheology, pH, or other factor is important, so most craft chocolate makers do not perform any kind of blending.
- Big chocolate is mostly uninterested in flavors other than chocolate in their chocolate, so craft chocolate makers focus on bringing out other flavors (fruity, floral, herbal, etc) from their beans.
In all fairness, like all generalizations, these are generalizations. But, as with most stereotypes there is some basis in fact for arriving at them. If you were to carefully survey the offerings from the thousands of craft chocolate brands around the world there does appear to be a certain sameness about many of them.
Take a look at what the International Chocolate Awards rewards most by sheer winner count: plain origin dark bars. It has the most winners (which means the most entrants), and it is the first category listed. Ask yourself, “Is this pattern repeated in the Academy of Chocolate and other awards programs?”
But ...
... as a judge at ICA rounds, I came to dread judging flights of plain dark origin bars: the same rough percentage, more or less identical recipe, made from the more or less the same beans, mostly made with the same processing workflow.
... as an educated consumer while it may intellectually interesting to compare the same beans turned into chocolate by different makers, the actual tasting experience is too-often marred by suboptimal chocolate-making skills.
Points to Ponder
- What does “craft” signal compared with non-craft? That argument has been going on since at least 2006.
- Similarly, what does “artisan chocolate” signal and how is the same as, or different from, craft?
- How do different definitions confuse consumers? What does “bean-to-bar” mean, and how is it relevant when brands like Ghirardelli (which is owned by Lindt) decorate their boxes with phrases like, Proudly Bean to Bar; Our Commitment to Ultimate Quality?
- What does “tree-to-bar” mean and is how is it the same or different from “farm-to-bar?”
- Does the world really need another me-too 70% two-ingredient chocolate made from beans from the Åkesson Estate (much as I admire the work Bertil has done) on Madagascar manufactured in a repurposed wet-grinder?
- In What Ways is Craft Chocolate NOT Boring?
A lot of time is wasted on unproductive arguing over definitions that an average consumer (who are the ones who need to be won over to grow the market) don’t care about.
But ...
... if you’re watching this, you’re likely not an average chocolate consumer. So, let’s have a productive discussion today about three ideas:
- What does it mean to be “craft” chocolate?
- What does “style” mean? (And is style synonymous with “type”?)
- Why does it matter?
A Consensus Definition of Craft
Craft chocolate is “chocolate made by a single producer who controls the whole process from raw cacao to finished bar (not melted-down couverture bought from an industrial supplier), in small batches, from traceable, high-quality cacao that's been properly fermented and dried at origin.”
— Synthesized from over 30 sources
A recent peer-reviewed article in Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety [Bean-to-Bar Chocolate: An Integrative Framework Linking Terroir, Biochemistry, Processing, and Sensory Expression] frames it almost identically: small-batch chocolate from a specific origin, made with traditional methods, free of quality-degrading additives, and shaped by the producer's own skill and taste.
For some, “craft” is as much about process integrity as it is about flavor. Others define craft purely by the sensory result.
Cocoa Runners, Bar & Cocoa, Pump Street, Dandelion, and Cococlectic, (all makers or specialty retailers), converge on whole-bean roasting, single-origin or transparently-sourced cacao, and a maker who’s personally involved in production, often self-taught, prioritizing distinctiveness over the consistency mass producers chase.
TL;DR: bean-to-bar process, small batch, traceable fine-flavor cacao, minimal ingredients, flavor-forward intent, with genuine, unresolved industry disagreement over whether scale and ownership are essential criteria or just common correlates.
Types vs Styles
- Strictly, Type is a [legal] category. This is exemplified in CFR 21.163. Most type systems have evolved over time, which means they are messy. There is no legal definition for Dark Chocolate, but there is a bright line difference between Dark and Sweet Chocolate, which is the legal category name.
- Strictly, Style is everything that isn’t [legally] defined. It’s the cluster of process, ingredient, and other choices that modify the Type. In this view, Dark Chocolate is a style of Sweet Chocolate.
A few of the axes people mean when they say “style”:
- Bean-to-bar vs. chocolatier-made: whether the maker processed raw cacao into chocolate themselves, or bought finished couverture and turned it into confections.
- Single-origin vs. blend: one farm or cooperative's cacao, versus beans combined across origins for a consistent house flavor.
- Eating chocolate vs. drinking chocolate: format and fat/particle-size choices, not composition per se.
- Craft/artisan vs. industrial;small-batch, flavor-forward production versus high-volume, consistency-optimized production. (Notably, none of the sources that debate craft chocolate’s definition are arguing about type. They're arguing about style.)
- Regional tradition: Swiss-style (heavy conching, very smooth), Belgian-style, French-style (often darker, more austere), Mexican-style (coarser grind, cinnamon/spice), American craft-style (light roast, high acidity tolerance, terroir-forward).
- Roast and conche profile; light vs. dark roast, short vs. long conche times; processes which shape flavor without changing the legal type.
One way to think of the these two concepts is that type is what’s in the bar and how much, often set by regulation. Style is how and why it was made that way, set by the maker’s tradition, philosophy, and market positioning. A dark chocolate (type) can be Swiss-style, single-origin, bean-to-bar, and craft (all styles) at the same time: the type and style stack, they do not compete.
Why the Discussion Matters
Stay tuned (or watch the archived episode) for my thoughts on these points, and ponder the questions:
- Under this rubric, isn’t it trivially easy to create a new chocolate style?
- In what ways is craft chocolate boring?
Future Episodes
August News and AMA
Cocoa and Health – new research, with regular ChocolateLife contributor, Keith Ayoob.
Celebrating(?) the 25th anniversary of the signing (on Sept 19, 2001) of the Harkin-Engel Protocol with confirmed special guests Terry Collingsworth and Miki Mistrati.
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