At the 2019 Northwest Chocolate Festival, I caught up with Luisa Abram. We found a (mostly) quiet spot to discuss adventuring through the Amazon rainforest on boats and on foot, making new and high-quality milk powder, discovering new locales with great new cacao, making new bars, monkeys, and more! Luisa is such a dynamic and fascinating young woman who has already made an impact in the world of fine chocolate, and she has so much more she wants to share with all of us ..read more

Join in my conversation with Julia and Kelley – recent members of the Utah Chocolate Society – as we talk about finding fine chocolate, finding chocolate nerds, and experiencing our legendary tournament for their first time! Utah has had great chocolate and a fun scene for a long time, so hear these fine people’s story of discovery and chocolate camaraderie ..read more

Back in November, 2018, I was able to find John Nanci. Like a lion, I separated him from the masses, except then we sat and talked – for an hour! John started Chocolate Alchemy years and years ago to share what he found out about chocolate – especially with regards to making it. The chances are that if you have ever looked into making it yourself, you have stumbled across his work. I fist encountered it in 2009, dumb-founded that such a repository of all things chocolate-making was out in the open. Sit back, relax, grab a bar of chocolate, and enjoy an intriguing look into the life and mind of ..read more

The annual tournament may just be the highlight of all the Utah Chocolate Society does. Every year we start with 64 of the world’s best chocolate bars, and every year we subject ourselves to the toil of randomly pairing, tasting, and voting on them to have them compete and move on or drop out of our single-elimination tournament. It involves 9 meetings between February and April culminating in the April ChocSoc birthday extravaganza. Taste buds are overwhelmed, hearts are broken, senses are delighted. And we come up with the one… Setting out bars for a past tournament In this episode – the fir ..read more

I got to meet Felipe and William of Diogo Vaz at the Northwest Chocolate Festival in Seattle back in November. Felipe and I sat down to talk chocolate and his background. He changed career paths dramatically 5 years ago to leave the office, corporate world and work in food, and again only months ago to dive headlong into chocolate production. Diogo Vaz has their own plantations on Sao Tome, and their production facility is only minutes away. Listen in on a fascinating story of a unique approach to chocolate ..read more

Lars Moller of Ingemann Fine Cocoa occupies a niche in the cacao supply chain that is rather unlike the vast majority. Ingemann buys cacao from farmers in Nicaragua, and they work the fermentation and drying of the beans – with an unheard-of level of sophistication and data to provide a variety of flavor and chemical profiles. Along the way, they supply a guaranteed path to market, and secure minimum pricing (to allow even higher) to 1,000 farms. Lars has a cool story, and I am excited to share it with you ..read more

Bryan Graham and his wife Dahlia started Fruition Chocolate amidst a fascination with the mystique and magnetism of chocolate making drawing them in. Over the years, they have sourced great cacao and experimented with new approaches to single origin chocolate, inclusions, and confections. In this interview, Bryan tells his story of how he discovered food, decided to become a chef, and found a passion for making chocolate that would define his career. Fruition Chocolate has a special distinction among chocolate makers of the world – they are one of only 4 chocolate makers to win the Utah Choco ..read more

Harish Manoj Kumar is the head farmer for Regal Chocolates where they grow cacao in southern India. In this interview, Harish tells us his story of beginning to grow cacao and learning how to greatly improve his family farm’s biological health and the quality of cacao they produce. Amelonado varietals of cacao have long been associated with cheap and poor quality beans, but there has been amazing progress in their quality when the trees and fruit and seeds are treated well, and Regal Chocolates has found beautiful flavors with amelonado beans along with Trinitario and Criollo. The Solstice Ind ..read more

Domantas Uzpalis, the man behind Chocolate Naive, is one of the most inspiring people I know in chocolate. His approach to chocolate-making is creative and thoughtful and fresh and new. But he is not merely jaded with the status quo. He wants to personally create and provide new ideas and products in the workd of fine chocolate, and he does so terrifically! Listen in to our conversation as the Northwest Chocolate Festival 2018 wound down (I have many more episodes from last weekend to come) as we discuss his roots and his singular perspective on the world of craft, expressive chocolate ..read more

Matt Caputo is a longtime friend, and really a driving force behind my adventures in and passion for chocolate. The store started by his dad is where I have hosted the Chocolate Society from the beginning, and Matt personally introduced me to most of the chocolate world. Matt curates one of the greatest fine chocolate collections in this or any country, and his passion for fine foods, flavors, and practices drives the entire food culture in Utah ..read more