Last month, we had the great pleasure of welcoming Mike Longman and Becca Lazar from Chocolarder (Falmouth, Cornwall) to our roastery for a staff evening which began with a chocolate and coffee pairing. The two products have so much in common at farm level and it was great fun seeing how different flavours can match or complement each other. Who doesn’t love a sip of the good stuff while eating the good stuff! Afterwards, we sat down to hear from Mike and Becca how the company started, what makes them different in the world of chocolate and their current projects and challenges.
Mike is a chef by training. From working in some of the best and most rigorous kitchens, he developed a love for making everything from scratch from the most local ingredients possible. Obviously, with chocolate the two raw ingredients of cacao and sugar are not local, but all the additions and flavour combinations are sourced as close to the chocolate factory as possible. Chocolarder is one of the very few small-batch, bean to bar chocolate makers in the UK. There is a difference between chocolate makers and chocolatiers. Chocolate makers make chocolate from the raw ingredients, making their own cocoa butter and cocoa solids from cacao beans. Chocolatiers source those ingredients pre-processed into large slabs and then work them into chocolate bars and confectionaries. The distinction is important in the world of chocolate. By having complete control of the entire process, Chocolarder can celebrate and highlight the flavours of each farm and areas from which they buy.
Chocolarder are equally enthusiastic about their machinery. From the beginning, they have sourced and repurposed antique equipment, which is all held together it seems by sheer will and inventiveness. The machines are all individually named, from Mr McKracken the cocoa bean cracker to Enzo the chocolate bar wrapper. Enzo is a masterpiece of traditional engineering (long before the days of CAD drawings and computer algorithms) with 980 moving parts that are serviced and maintained by the Chocolarder team. Asked how they keep such individual machinery running (long after they were stopped being serviced let alone manufactured), the answer was “Cornwall”. Mike and Becca have a super team of makers and engineers around them that help keep the equipment running and the chocolate pouring.
We covered a lot of ground over the evening and spent some time talking about the challenges growing cacao and the cocoa industry. The botany and agronomy side are particularly interesting. It is a bit of a bonkers crop to see growing. The cacao pods grow from the trunk of the tree and vary in size from a small rugby ball to a larger one. They ripen to various deep yellows, reds, purples, and all the shades in between and each pod contains 80 to 100 beans. The beans are encapsulated by shells, which are held together by a sweet, white pith. It is this pith that is fermented off the shells. Fermentation can take around a week and is followed by drying. The pollination of the flowers for the following crop is extraordinary; each bean is individually pollinated which means there can sometimes be up to eight or nine different varietals in each pod.
We could go on, but let’s enjoy the truffles we have on the counter and anticipate bars and chocolate-covered-hazelnuts for Christmas! See Chocolarder.com for more information.
Monmouth x
