Chocolate Is Getting Worse (Rachel Handler)

Confectionery chocolate has never been worse, while craft chocolate has never been better!

Over the last ten years, the craft chocolate industry has made impressive gains toward the kind of agricultural rigor we take for granted in coffee, wine, beer, etc. We’re on the precipice of single-estate, single-varietal bars of two-ingredient chocolate with flavors you’ve never experienced before. Imagine a bar that tastes like a banana split or a crème brûlée with nothing but cacao and sugar on the ingredients list.

This work is happening primarily in Hawaii and Central and South America. I’m involved in the Hawaiian industry, and as a state we just landed $15 million in federal grant funding to propel our research forward. The next fifteen years in cacao are going to be some of the most interesting and innovative yet. I guarantee it.

This article goes into great depth about the woes of corporate confectionery chocolate. Surprise, surprise: it’s a race to the bottom. Merci, mon ami le “capital.” The author does a fantastic job contextualizing the “chocolate” on the shelves of most supermarkets and I absolutely recommend that anyone curious about the subject read this piece. It is well written, and well researched.

What did surprise me is that the author never once mentions the craft chocolate industry. They cover luxury confectionery but say not a word about the international single-origin craft scene. For an article about our humble everyday chocolate bar, I think the craft industry deserves at least one paragraph, though I’d be hard-pressed to say anything meaningful in just one.

-W