Dagoba chocolate

Originally broadcast: Oct. 25, 2007

Deep in the cocoa bean plantations of Brazil and beyond, there’s a chocolate revolution underway. Deep, dark, intense, pure chocolate — extreme chocolate — is rising up as the chocolate of choice like never before among chocolate connoisseurs and beyond.

Chocolate that lives very close to the bean. Forget milk chocolate. This is 70 percent pure cacao. 80 percent. 90 percent. 100 percent. Intense.

Food and drink super-guru Bill Buford is up to his neck in it. Literally naked in a vat of beans.

This hour, in an archive edition of On Point: New Yorker gourmand Bill Buford takes us deep into rain forest, dark beans, and extreme chocolate.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Bill Buford, staff writer for The New Yorker magazine, his article “Extreme Chocolate” appears in the current issue. He is the author of “Heat : An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany.”

Diego Badaro, a cacao farmer, his family plantation lies on the banks of the Rio de Contas in the Bahia rain forest of Brazil. His ancestors, also cacao plantation owners, figure largely in the writing of famed Brazilian novelist Jorge Amado.

Chocolates discussed/tasted by host Tom Ashbrook and The New Yorker’s Bill Buford:

Many thanks to Chocosphere.com for providing us with samples for our taste test.

Name: XOCOLATL
Maker: Dagoba
Purity: 74%
Origin: Various
This is a “flavored” chocolate bar, atypical of the others tasted this hour. But it has a lot of history behind it: It’s made with chile, vanilla and nutmeg, and so apparently is very close to the preparation that used to be made for the Aztec king Montezuma.

Name: AMPAMAKIA
Maker: Valrhona
Purity: 64%
Origin: Millot Plantation, Madagascar
The bar was made from the 2006 vintage of the Millot plantation. Details normally associated with fine wines — vintage, cru or origin, etc. — are being introduced into this chocolate business. Madagascar is said to make some of the finest.

Name: ANTILLES
Maker: Scharffen Berger
Purity: 75%
Origin: Trinidad, Grenada, Dominican Republic and Coastal Venezuela
Scharffen Berger was the first American maker to put cacao content on the package.

Name: MILAGROS
Maker: Dagoba
Purity: 68%
Origin: Peruvian Amazon, forestero bean
Dagoba’s Peruvian bar.

Name: SAMBIRANO
Maker: Domori
Purity: 100%
Origin/Type: Sambirano Valley, Madagascar. Trinitario, with high criollo genotype.
Almost pure cocoa. Very intense. Domori claims to be the first company to renew heirloom varietals of criollo cacao.

Name: CHUAO
Maker: Valrhona
Purity: 65%
Origin: Aragua Venezuela
2002 vintage. The bar is well past its sell-by date, illustrating how well chocolate keeps, and raising the question of whether a vintage develops unique flavors — or flavors that can’t be reproduced today.

Name: EROS
Maker: Dagoba
Purity: 74%
Origin: Various
Chocolate as aphrodisiac. This bar is actually an infusion with boysenberry and botanicals, “to awaken the heart,” says the wrapper.

How to Taste Chocolate
by Joanne Kryszek, Co-founder of Chocosphere:

Make sure your palette is clear. You can use room temperature water, crackers or bread before starting and between each tasting.
- Look: Dark chocolate can be reddish brown to dark brown. It should be shiny, but may have unusual patterns from the tempering process. This is normal.
- Snap: The chocolate should snap when broken. Break into bite size pieces.
- Smell: Smell the chocolate because a portion of taste is associated with the aroma.
- Chew: Bite the chocolate and break it in your mouth a few times, being careful not to swallow. Allow the warmth of your mouth melt the chocolate completely. Get the chocolate all around your mouth, on the tip and back of your tongue and at the sides and back of your mouth. Different areas in your mouth have the ability to taste sweet, bitter, tart and other taste sensations.
- Experience: This is where the fun is. Talk about what you are tasting. Chocolate can have all kinds of taste characteristics. Don’t be surprised…you can experience nuts, citrus, coffee, wood, leather, smoke, butter, bread and jam-like tastes

Deep in the cocoa bean plantations of Brazil and beyond, there’s a chocolate revolution underway. Deep, dark, intense, pure chocolate — extreme chocolate — is rising up as the chocolate of choice like never before among chocolate connoisseurs and beyond.

Chocolate that lives very close to the bean. Forget milk chocolate. This is 70 percent pure cacao. 80 percent. 90 percent. 100 percent. Intense.

Food and drink super-guru Bill Buford is up to his neck in it. Literally naked in a vat of beans.

This hour, On Point: New Yorker gourmand Bill Buford takes us deep into rain forest, dark beans, and extreme chocolate.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Bill Buford, staff writer for The New Yorker magazine, his article “Extreme Chocolate” appears in the current issue. He is the author of “Heat : An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany.”

Diego Badaro, a cacao farmer, his family plantation lies on the banks of the Rio de Contas in the Bahia rain forest of Brazil. His ancestors, also cacao plantation owners, figure largely in the writing of famed Brazilian novelist Jorge Amado.