Hot chocolates
By Tim Richardson
Published: August 4 2007 02:21 | Last updated: August 4 2007 02:21
Something is stirring in the world of chocolate. In the past few years, sales of high-end or artisan-made products have soared, while a new wave of young British chocolatiers has emerged, challenging the traditional French and Belgian supremacy in this rarefied area. Retailers say chocolate buyers have become more knowledgable and demanding, making this sector into one of the key battlefields of the foodie revolution.
Cast your mind back 10 or 15 years and remember what “fine chocolate” meant then to most of us. A bar of Swiss Lindt or Suchard, perhaps, or a box of intriguingly shell-shaped Guylian Belgian chocolates, bought from the delicatessen or an upscale supermarket such as Waitrose. Or maybe a box of fine chocolates from an established British producer such as Bendicks of Mayfair or Charbonnel et Walker of Bond Street (whose rose and violet creams were apparently a favourite of the late Queen Mother’s). Even high street outlets such as Thorntons were not then a complete no-go area for the “connoisseur”, while a box of Black Magic was for many still a byword for quality and sophistication, just as it was when the brand first appeared in the 1930s.
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At the tail-end of this neanderthal era of chocolate consumption in Britain, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the only high-cocoa-percentage bars on sale were described as cooking chocolate, and there was certainly nothing on offer that boasted “single-origin” credentials – that is, bars using cacao from a particular part of the world, or even from a single estate. (Cacao is the official name of the raw beans, whereas cocoa is what is produced from them.) In foodie circles today, a present of a box of After Eights, Terry’s Chocolate Orange or Matchmakers at a dinner party could only be countenanced as an amusingly kitsch gesture.
What has happened? In a matter of a decade or so, the chocolate landscape has completely changed. Fine handmade chocolate is now subject to the same quality expectations and social cachet as organic products with the added frisson of concerns about worker-welfare in the cacao plantations of Africa and the Carribbean. Chocolate now presses all the right ecological, organic and Fairtrade buttons for concerned consumers while still exuding the most attractive aroma of all for buyers: exclusivity.
It all started changing in the early 1990s, says Chantal Coady, who, as founder of Rococo Chocolates on the Kings Road in Chelsea in 1983 (and also founder of the Campaign for Real Chocolate three years later), is generally acknowledged as a pioneer of the revolution. Green & Black’s, the organic and Fairtrade chocolate producer, was founded in 1991 but, says Coady, things really started moving in terms of turnover in the mid-1990s. “Over the past 10 years, Rococo’s sales have gone up every year,” she says.
A new generation of chocoholics is seeking out not just high-cocoa-percentage bars (up to 100 per cent) but, increasingly, so-called “origin” chocolate from specific parts of the world, and even – at the high end of the high end – single-estate chocolate.
The chocolate percentile rating refers to the proportion of pure cacao beans used in the creation of a bar, and the idea that this itself might be an index of its quality and sophistication has certainly filtered through into the mainstream, though real connoisseurs say this is something of a red herring. For them, it is the provenance of the chocolate that is all-important – its exact location and its salient flavour characteristics. The narrower the geographical range, the better.
Away from the pure-chocolate fanatics, there are the chocolatiers. Britain’s new wave of flavour gurus vies with the likes of chef Heston Blumenthal in terms of experimentation and innovation. Prices for handmade chocolates at this end of the market can seem ludicrously high – £2 for a single gift-wrapped chocolate in Paul A Young’s north London shop, for example – but at the same time other products from the same maker can appear relatively reasonable, given their handmade nature and the rarity of the ingredients. A price of £3.50 is realistic for a bar produced by one of the acclaimed new Italian makers such as Amedei and Domori, which are rapidly overtaking French rivals in terms of their reputation for quality. It does not sound like so much to pay for chocolate heaven, especially among Britain’s ever-growing number of affluent foodies – those groomed by more than a decade of high-falutin’ food journalism in magazines and weekend newspaper supplements, who are now willing to pay extra for quality and exclusivity. In a nutshell, anyone prepared to pay £10 and upwards for a chicken would probably fit this demographic.
While firm figures are hard to come by in this area, the rather wonderfully named trade body for the sector, the Biscuit, Cake, Chocolate and Confectionery Alliance (BCCCA), suggests there is strong evidence for this upward trend emerging from retailers and producers. “In broad terms, the market for this kind of product has grown and it has been driven by the higher cocoa-percentage angle,” says Cliff Luckhoo, trade policy director of the BCCCA. “In the old days, chocolate was part of the everyday grocery basket. Now it is perceived as a treat, and there is such an emphasis on diet and health that people use it to reward themselves. They can’t eat as much as previously but they are happy to pay more for a higher quality product – and that usually comes from overseas.”
Luckhoo’s claims will be be borne out by a visit to larger newsagents, where not just Toblerone, Guylian and Lindt, but increasingly brands such as Valrhona can be found on the shelf next to the Mars bars and Cadbury’s Dairy Milk. Valrhona is a French brand (from the Rhone Valley, hence the name) that, until about 15 years ago, simply did not make chocolate bars. Its business was supplying highest quality couverture, or chocolate base for sauces and mousses, to chefs in just about every top-end restaurant in Europe. Founded in 1922 as an artisan patisseur, Valrhona has long been famous for its quality control, employing scores of chocolate tasters to ensure standards are maintained. The company subsequently became one of the pioneers of single-origin chocolate bars and is now among the leading brands, in terms of quality, in the premium mass-market area – that is, high-quality chocolate that is not handmade.
In supermarkets, too, the trend can be discerned, with outlets such as Tesco and Sainsbury stocking expensive chocolates alongside the wine gums, all to attract the £10-a-chicken brigade. But in this area, it is Waitrose that has taken the chocolate revolution to heart, with many branches stocking up to a dozen top brands such as El Rey, Duchy Originals and Prestat, as well as Valrhona.
“There is currently [annual] growth of between 10 and 15 per cent on some dark chocolate brands,” says Gill Smith of Waitrose, “and we are seeing growth of over 20 per cent in our premium bar and premium boxed sectors. We recently had a range review where we gave extra focus to the premium bar sector, introducing significantly more products. And we are sourcing from an increasing number of artisan chocolatiers – around 15 to 20 now. If people are going to a dinner party, they want chocolates they can talk about, chocolates with a story behind them.”
Tanya McMullen, confectionery buyer at London department store Selfridges, suggests consumer enthusiasm is helping to drive the market. “We’ve definitely seen sales going up. People are really into it now. They’re coming in and they know what they are looking for. They may want a Venezuelan bar, or a 60 per cent bar. The customers are becoming connoisseurs.” McMullen is also enthusiastic about home-produced chocolate: “There’s so much going on in England at the moment. What Melt are doing at the moment is inspirational, and we are also working with people like Sir Hans Sloane and Paul A. Young.” Melt is the acclaimed new-wave chocolatier in Notting Hill, where customers are encouraged to watch concoctions such as jasmine tea truffles being made, while Sir Hans Sloane is the brand launched last year by American chocolatier Bill McCarrick and stocked exclusively by Selfridges.
A visit to Paul A Young’s north London shop is a sensual pleasure in itself – and that’s before you get to the chocolate. This tiny, elegant boutique in Islington’s Camden Passage – noticeably cool in its temperature as well as in its design – opened in April last year and already boasts a dedicated local following, with some customers coming in for a chocolate fix every day. Young, a slightly built Yorkshireman in his 30s with that manic chef look in his eye, makes everything by himself in his basement kitchen, though he is about to take on an assistant. His trademark is exuberantly flavoured chocolate – lime and coriander, port and stilton, garden mint (made with fresh mint only and a real winner) or pineapple confit with ylang-ylang, as well as his signature sea-salted caramel chocolates. In addition, there are some 25 unusually flavoured bars on sale, most in the 65-85 per cent cocoa-percentage range. The shop’s bestselling line is not pure chocolate, however, but Young’s fiendishly good chocolate brownie, which at £2.50 a pop is the most economical way of getting a fix at this particular emporium.
Young is one of a handful of young British chocolatiers to have set up shop in the past few years – William Curley of Richmond, west London, is another, as is Damian Allsop, formerly of Melt, who has worked with Heston Blumenthal and at El Bulli, the famed restaurant in Spain. All come from a patisserie background because, as Young explains, there is only a limited chocolate-making tradition in Britain. Young started his career as a patisserie chef under Marco Pierre White and fell into chocolate-making almost by accident, when Chantal Coady of Rococo Chocolates asked him to make some special port-flavoured chocolates for her. When they sold out, he made more and then entered the annual awards organised by the Academy of Chocolate, a body set up in 2005 by Coady and others to “improve the standard and knowledge of chocolate in the UK”. When he won a medal at the awards, Young realised it might be worth selling the chocolate under his own name.
Young says that a British style of chocolate is gradually emerging, which is founded as much on attitude – eccentricity, even – as on anything else. “I go to Paris every year to see what is going on,” he says. “You go into chocolatiers and it all looks the same. Sometimes it even tastes the same. They have a very classic take.” Young’s next shop is due to open next month at the Royal Exchange in the City of London, again with all the chocolates handmade on the premises. Like other British chocolatiers, Young sets great store by educating his customers. He runs tasting days and evenings for private or corporate clients, creating yet more choco-evangelists as he goes. (Melt of Notting Hill even runs chocolate-making and tasting sessions targeted at children.)
Young’s picture of the British chocolate-making scene is echoed by Coady. “At the specialist end, it is more creative and quirky here than in France or Belgium,” she says. “It’s really a blank piece of paper in Britain.”
And she is as gung-ho as the rest of the fine-chocolate world about the market. “We’ve got a third shop opening this autumn and our chocolates are sold at Liberty, the Conran Shop, Heal’s and Waitrose – which taken together is like having another shop.” Coady reckons that in international terms there are now “probably a dozen” first-class chocolatiers in Britain, with perhaps 50 more bubbling just below that level.
Among Coady’s associates in the Academy of Chocolate are Paul A Young and Martin Christy of Seventypercent.com, a website and online chocolate store launched in 1993. Despite the name of the business, Christy is wary of cocoa-percentage as a guide to quality: “That would be like buying a bottle of wine according to its alcohol [content]. However, with anything over 70 per cent it is very hard to hide the flavour of the beans with a lot of sugar.” Christy is also sceptical about the trend for 100 per cent chocolate as some kind of Holy Grail for connoisseurs. “I don’t personally find much of it palatable.”
Christy, a former web programmer and part-time musician, says he was turned on to fine chocolate in 1993 after what he calls “a chance encounter with Valrhona’s Guanaja bar in Harrods”. He estimates his online store sells “a few hundred bars” of single-estate chocolate every week, mostly retailing at between £3.50 and £6. “What’s exciting is that about six years ago there were only a handful of bars you could buy from regional sources. Now there are about 100,” he says. “We start people off on something like Michel Cluizel’s ‘Mangaro’ bar or Valrhona’s ‘Manjari’ – they’re both from Madagascar. It’s all about flavour and length – you just don’t need to munch through a whole bar.”
Christy says consumers should be suspicious of terms such as “origin” chocolate, which can be vaguely regional, and should look instead for single-estate bars. “There’s a sense that some supermarkets, for example, have asked their suppliers where their cacao comes from and then just put that on the box. In the end your taste buds are the best guide,” he says. But he is scathing about the cheaper end of the chocolate market, claiming that anything with a low cocoa percentage containing fats and preservative should not have the right to be called chocolate. Larger producers have “jumped on the bandwagon” as he puts it, referring to Cadbury’s acquisition in 2005 of organic producer Green & Black’s and its launch this spring of a “Deeply Dark” range of 60 per cent chocolate bars (Cadbury’s Bournville is just 34 per cent).
As for Cadbury’s, it is quite sanguine about jumping on the bandwagon. “If we do spot a trend in the market, then we will bring out a bar to reflect that,” says Tony Bilsborough, “the voice of Cadbury’s”. “There is a growth in what could be called premium chocolate, with a high cocoa solids content – but we are still a milk-chocolate nation. It’s still 90 per cent milk in the UK market, though dark chocolate is breaking out of the foodie heartland.” Bilsborough adds that since its acquisition of Green & Black’s in 2005 it has seen sales growth of 40-50 per cent, “the fastest-growing brand in the market”. He says Cadbury’s has not changed the recipe or manufacturing processes of Green & Black’s. The London-based firm still operates at arm’s length from the Cadbury’s historic factory and headquarters at Bournville, in Birmingham, retaining both its founder Craig Sams as chairman and its official Fairtrade status. (What is not publicised is that all Green & Black’s chocolate is manufactured in France, as it was before the takeover.)
So will we all be eating fine, artisanal chocolate a few years from now? For evangelists such as Martin Christy, the charms of fine chocolate are self-evident. “We get Cadbury’s Dairy Milk and Galaxy lovers along to tastings and these people completely change their views after three pieces of chocolate” he says. “We find this all the time.”
Despite such claims, one suspects that Britain’s cheap milk-chocolate juggernaut will take a long time to turn around – and what is wrong with that? As with all foods, there is a time and a place for different things, and most people like variation: cocoa-bean connoisseur one day, choccie-guzzler the next. And super-sweet, low cocoa-percentage chocolate is an important part of British culture and, crucially, part of every British person’s childhood. New connoisseurs will find that chocolate legacy extremely difficult to melt.
Tim Richardson is the author of ‘Sweets: the History of Temptation’
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
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