What do you get when you cross a Space Shuttle techno-geek with the creator of 'Wired" magazine and stick them in a Wonka-esque chocolate factory shipped in its entirety from Germany?
Something very, very delicious.
TCHO chocolate company is a unique, employee-owned chocolate factory in San Francisco that has been in existence for less than a year. Dubbed “Silicon Valley start-up meets San Francisco food culture,” the company prides itself on its painstaking “from-scratch” methods. “We are not re-melters” insist founders Timothy Child, the techno-man and Louis Rosetto, the magazine maestro.
They're also pretty proud of their unique "mission": To help every chocoholic discover the chocolate style he/she likes best. That might be Fruity, Floral, Nutty, Citrus, Earthy or Chocolatey. Each Tcho bar is crafted in one of the styles.
Customer feedback is an important part of the operation. Every small, square, brown-paper-bag pouch is tagged with a Beta Batch Number. (In the techno world, “beta” means something is in the process of development.) Customers are asked to go on-line to Tcho.com and give their opinions of the chocolate. In that way, so the reasoning goes, the next batch will be even better.
I’m sitting here with a “Fruity” bar with the beta number PERU 0.11 M and a “Chocolatey” bar assigned C GHANA 0.99 B-C. (These are the only two chocolates currently available.)
I know I’m supposed to go on-line and comment. But I’m much too busy swooning over these two sensational candies. They’re both very dark, with grown-up chocolate flavor but no hint of bitterness or “burnt.” The “Fruity” has a distinctive brightness; the “Chocolatey” is outrageously fragrant and has a super-rich mouthfeel as it melts.
And “melt” is the operative word here, folks. These are chocolates to plop on your tongue and let them take their sweet time dribbling down your throat. Aromas swirl, flavors develop, a love affair is born.
TCHO is one of a growing number of young, ambitious, compulsive entrepreneurs who are dedicated to the “bean-to-bar” chocolate business. That’s industry lingo for the complicated process by which cacao is turned into chocolate, a process involving roasting beans, breaking them into small pieces called nibs and removing the shells, grinding the nibs, usually with sugar, to form a chocolate paste, then refining and conching (kneading) to produce the desired texture and flavor.
Other bean-to-bar chocolate makers in the news these days include Theo in Seattle, Mast Bros. Chocolate in New York, and Taza in Somerville, Mass. If you’ve tried any of them, please share your thoughts with us here.
You can read more about the bean-to-bar phenomenon in a recent Los Angeles Times article. Or you can hit Tcho.com and get busy sampling.
Me? I’m closing my eyes, savoring my “Fruity” and wondering how the heck I could have ever settled for a Hershey’s Kiss.
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