Choc Talk
For nearly 20 years, Green & Black's has been producing some of the world's best chocolate bars. What makes them, and the company, so special is a curious duality: they are both delicious and pure, decadent and conscientious, good to eat and good for the Earth. Green & Black's likes to call this concept "living in the &" — meaning, you can spoil yourself rotten with fabulous chocolate, but through Green & Black's fair trade practices and wholesome ingredients, know that you are leaving the planet unspoiled.
The story begins with the beans. Chocolate comes from cocoa beans, which are grown in pods in tropical climes. They are roasted, crushed, heated and "conched" (a folding/mixing process — think conch shells) to yield a gooey paste. The paste is typically about 50 percent cocoa butter, a flavorless fat that adds texture. Many people think that the very best bars are those that contain cocoa solids in the range of 60-70 percent. Sugar makes up most of the rest of a chocolate bar.
In much of the world, cocoa crops are heavily treated with pesticides. But Green & Black's selects only organically grown beans, mostly the Trinitario variety, harvested in Belize and the Dominican Republic. The farmers pick the pods at their peak of ripeness, remove the beans (about 45 to a pod), and cover them with banana leaves for five days to let the chocolate flavor emerge through fermentation. Green & Black's adds exotic natural ingredients like dried sour cherries from Eastern Europe and whole roasted almonds from Sicily. They do not use vanillin, a common artificial flavoring used in chocolate and derived from wood pulp, or anything else unnatural.
When Green & Black's founders, Craig Sams and Josephine Fairley, traveled to Belize in 1994, they discovered that pressure from the big cocoa companies was depressing world cocoa prices, preventing many local farmers from meeting their families' basic needs — and sometimes creating the incentive for those farmers to engage in unsustainable environmental practices or to force their children into the fields. Craig and Jo agreed to pay the farmers a fair price for their goods — a practice that has come to be known as "fair trade" — and it led to the creation of Maya Gold, a Fair Trade Certified chocolate bar that is one of the best sellers at Sprouts. It features an intense blend of dark chocolate, orange, cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla. Recently, Green & Black's announced that its entire line of chocolate bars have been Fair Trade Certified. For a fascinating look at how fair trade farming works in Belize, be sure to watch the 4-minute video.
Today, Green & Black's has emerged as a leader in the chocolate industry, and they have expanded into baking bars, hot chocolate and even ice cream. And while they may be part of a larger corporate parent, they are still very much a small artisan company that is "living in the &." You can see that on every label, and taste it in every bite.
from the February, 2010 edition of Fresh Off the Press
