Flavour first is a principal I stand by

Although there are many important aspects which concern the creation of fine chocolate, putting flavour first is what I base my decisions on. That is, the fine flavours found in a maker’s dark chocolate bars.

Although aspects such as fair-trade, organic, supporting small businesses are important values of mine as well, they are not number one. Why is that? They are non synonymous with quality of the cacao, the chocolate, or the skill of the maker.

What’s important to me is not just that the cacao is fair-trade sourced or that it is made by a small-scale independent business. It is that their number one priority is respect for the craft and quality of the product. That shows itself in the quality of the chocolate bar. A skillful maker who knows not only how to source quality cacao, but has the skillset to turn it into incredible fine chocolate is what Bean To Bar World seeks to support, and also seeks to educate you and the public on.

Without consumers who appreciate fine chocolate, makers will just switch to less favorable cacao bean sources. The farmers who grow the rare and fine cacao trees will have less incentive to do so as they become less profitable if they have no buyers. If they sell their cacao at market price, they are better off growing other types of cacao such as bulk cacao which is not as fine a quality but more beneficial to the growers. The end result is a world where more and more monocrops of mediocre cacao are grown, being used to produce more mediocre chocolate, and a consumer base wondering why their foods don’t offer them enough satisfaction.

Flavour is important to our needs. You may know this if you ever suffered from not being able to taste your foods for days or weeks or even months. Humans were not meant to eat only for fuel. The food may give us the physical energy to go on, but flavour gives us the mental energy. It gives us excitement and encouragement. However, we lose out on that when we surrounded ourselves with mediocrity. This is why commercial foods nearly always contains “natural” or artificial flavour enhancers, because most consumers would realize how poor or mediocre the quality of the ingredients truly are. To be able to take something as simple as flavourful fine cocoa beans, and grind it together with a little sugar to create a bar of chocolate that has multitudes of flavours is no simple matter. Logistically it requires the building of systems and relationships between all parties involved, and requires a great deal of skill to be created. It also requires people out there to understand, appreciate, and encourage the idea of flavour first.