So I was thinking.

There’s a lot to chocolate making that doesn’t reach the public’s attention. And there’s a lot to chocolate making that even some of the most sophisticated chocolate connoisseurs are not totally aware of. There are just some things that only chocolate makers experience on a day-to-day basis.

And these chocolate making experiences that all chocolate makers share is something that I realized while at the Northwest Chocolate Festival in Seattle last weekend. Not that I didn’t think about it before, it’s just that meeting some of these folks I realized how much we had in common before we even had a chance to make our introductions.

As with any trade or craft, the professionals that do them share similar experiences to other folks in the business. And since us chocolate makers spend a large chunk of our time generally doing the same thing, our lives are not too different—and there are many experiences that we have shared and that we have in common, even though we’ve never met. Looking across the room at the NW Chocolate Festival, it was this understanding that negated the need for all the introductions and sales pitches that we are all so used to with non-chocolate makers.

However, I will add, despite this common ground, I am willing to bet that none of the chocolate makers in that room at the chocolate festival make chocolate in the same way. That’s the beauty of chocolate making—we all produce chocolate bars but we all reach that point by taking a separate path. One of the ideas that I have long been enamored with is that there are no two chocolate bars in the world that taste exactly the same (when it comes to small and medium-sized producers—the super producers are another story). This is true in any combination of scenarios. Every maker has a slightly different theory about the way chocolate should be made. Every combination of chocolate making equipment will produce a different flavor. And even if we all started from the same bag of beans, every chocolate maker would end up with something noticeably unique. And that’s part of what makes craft chocolate “craft”.

So what I’m saying is… Chocolate makers have a lot in common but none of us make similar chocolate. And that’s an important concept to understand considering all of the similar single origin chocolate bars out there that are made by a variety of chocolate makers. For the chocolate enthusiast, it’s all about finding the right combination of cacao percent, origin and how the chocolate was made.

This all might sound a bit “ranty”, but this is the first installment of what I hope will become a recurring post theme: The Chocolate Maker’s Perspective.

Robbie