The answer: It depends. Some bars taste like ho-hum chocolate. Others may astonish you, tasting deeply of chocolate but also of blueberries and earth, making a $1 bar taste like wax in comparison. How is that possible? It begins with an understanding of the different types of chocolate makers. RELATED: 5 Legitimate Health Benefits You’ll Reap From Eating Chocolate
Ingredients Determine Quality
There are two types of chocolatiers: big-name companies operating on a large scale and small craft artisans. The key divider between them are the ingredients they use. The largest producers add emulsifiers and loads of sugar to their chocolate, resulting in cheaper, industrial-scale bars that are uniform from batch to batch, ensuring consistency across a global market. Craft artisans take a purist approach: Many use nothing but cocoa, cocoa butter, and sugar, perhaps a little vanilla. Blending cheap beans from many cocoa-producing regions helps the large-scale companies reach uniformity, a strategy that runs counter to the approach used at the craft level. Though you’ll find chocolate blends made by thoughtful chocolate artisans, most small chocolate makers concoct single-origin, single-estate bars, crafted from cocoa beans sourced from just one country or one grower. (Chocolate is like wine in this way.) Essentially, craft chocolate artisans approach ingredients to accent the subtle differences in cocoa from place to place, while industrial chocolate makers level them.
Growing Cacao Beans
The chocolate-making process is long. First, warm-country farms grow cacao—big gnarled pods that look like flat, colorful footballs with cacao beans growing inside. But before shipping their crops to chocolate makers, farmers have to harvest, ferment, and dry them, making cacao cultivation a far more intricate process than that for fruits or vegetables ready right off the vine (like tomatoes). Many small artisans work closely with their suppliers, acquiring knowledge of their process early on. Many visit their farmers and become intimately aware of how their cacao is fermented and dried, which shapes their chocolate’s final flavor. This gives them an edge over industrial producers. Unfortunately, some chocolate farmers—big and craft brands—employ child labor. Before you settle on a favorite brand, research if it uses cocoa grown under such circumstances. RELATED: Cacao Water Is the Healthy, Refreshing Beverage Everyone Is Buzzing About
Chocolate Bar Production
After receiving their crop from farmers, chocolate makers take over with roasting, cracking, winnowing, and grounding, each of which alters the final product. Take roasting, the process that transforms cacao into cocoa: Industrial producers tend to (like many big coffee companies) over-roast beans, while artisans roast their beans more tenderly to draw out unique qualities and nuances. The smallest producers may even roast in home ovens. Finally, chocolate makers heat and temper their chocolate into its final shape.
Difference in Flavors
As for flavor, craft chocolate bars offer more character and vary widely—some may have notes of raspberries, others of hay and honey—but their common feature is a deep, dark intensity that pales compared to their industrial counterparts. Single-origin and single-estate bars are said to have terroir, the taste of place. Just as with grapes for wine, cocoa absorbs subtleties of the sun, soil, and air where it’s grown, as well as through their fermentation and drying processes. Craft artisans strive to draw out place-specific subtleties, resulting in a deeper, more flavorful, more interesting bar. On the other hand, large-scale chocolate tastes like, well, chocolate—the kind we’ve tasted since childhood. It brings smoothness, sameness, and a down-the-middle flavor hard to describe, other than as chocolatey. RELATED: A 1-Pound Chocolate Bar and 12 More Trader Joe’s Items Chocolate Fans Will Love
So… Which to Buy?
Chocolate should curl your lips into a smile, better your day, and make you happy. Eat around to discover what you like. If you prefer the $1 bar, stick with that. But you may appreciate the nuance of a craft chocolate shaped by hand, so open your mind and try a few.
