A Grand Cru From Hershey?

During
my first pilgrimage to Tain-L’Hermitage in 199O, the smell
of chocolate, not wine, filled the air. I learned that Tain
was not only home to Hermitage wine, but also to one of
France’s most famous chocolate producers, Valrhona. Given
the proximity of the Rhone Valley’s most famous cru, it is
not surprising that Valrhona pioneered the “cru” concept in
the chocolate industry.

Traditionally,
the method of making a chocolate is very similar to that
employed by a large Champagne house when making a
Non-Vintage Brut Champagne. The focal point is making a
blend so that weaknesses of some lots are offset by the
strengths of other ones. This method ensures consistency of
quality and style. The chocolate makers however have a lot
farther to go than the Champagne houses for their principal
raw material, cacao beans. While chocolate producers are,
for the most part, located near sophisticated markets in
temperate regions of the world, their sources of supply are
located thousands of miles away in tropical climes.
Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Trinidad, Brazil, Costa Rica,
Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Madagascar, Malaysia, and
Fiji are just some of the sources of quality
beans.

In 1984,
Valrhona, however, began a line of chocolates that veered
away from the blending method. Their idea was to link, and
therefore, to define chocolate by the origin of the cacao
beans. It created a line of chocolate called “Grand Crus”.
These were the first internationally marketed chocolates
using the word “cru”, a word that the French language
identifies first as a vineyard and secondly as a wine. The
so-called “Grand Crus” of Valrhona, named Guanaja, Caraibe,
and Manjari by Valrhona, are blends that respectively come
from South America, the Caribbean islands, and Madagascar.
Given the enormous areas that these “crus” identify as
origins, Valrhona’s use of the word “cru” contains more than
just than a dash of branding. There are no authorized
organizations that define what the word “cru” means for the
chocolate industry.

Valrhona’s use
of the word “cru” is somewhat specious when compared to what
the term means in the case of Tain’s own famous wine “cru”,
Hermitage. It contains some 131 hectares (193 acres) and a
great many regulations ensure that wines called Hermitage
have a certain style and degree of quality. Even more
precise and more highly regulated is Burgundy’s tiny
Romanee-Conti. It comprises 1.81 hectares (4.5 acres). The
confines of “crus” recognized by legislation within France’s
AOC system are very difficult to change without going
through a complex legal process.

On the other
hand, there are “crus” relating to vineyards and wine which
are historic classifications and which are not part of
current French wine legislation. These “crus” have the right
to identify themselves on labels because at one time in
history they were officially recognized. The 1855
classification of the chateaux of the Haut-Medoc and
Sauternes is the classic example of an historic “cru”
system. Because the 1855 classification attached the
designation “cru” to the chateau, the company, rather than
the originating vineyards, the assignment of origin has been
far more elastic than that associated with legally
recognized crus such as Hermitage and Romanee-Conti. In
1951, Chateau Prieure-Lichine, a 4th growth in the 1855
classification, located in the commune of Margaux, comprised
11 hectares (27acres). Since then owners have made purchases
which have enlarged the property to 7O hectares (173 acres).
Parcels that are now part of Chateau Prieue-Lichine were
once part of Chateaux Durfort, Brane-Cantenac, Palmer,
Ferriere, Kirwan, Giscours, Boyd-Cantenac, and Issan.
Chateau Prieure-Lichine has as many as 4O separate parcels
throughout the 1248 hectares (3O84 acres) under vine in the
Margaux commune appellation. Other examples of historic cru
systems are the Echelle des Crus Champagne, the Graves
Classification in Bordeaux, and the Cotes de Provence
Classification.

In the 198Os,
Bordeaux chateaux began the practice of making two
selections of grapes, one destined for their Cru wine and
the other to a “second label”. For example, Chateau de
Clairefont is the second wine of Chateau Prieure-Lichine.
Tuscan producers enviously watching the Bordelais mimicked
what they saw. Though they could not use the French word
“cru” on their labels, they began to refer to their best
wines as “cru wines” even though many of these wines came
neither from a specific vineyard nor from contiguous
vineyards. Many Tuscan crus were the selections of the very
best grapes from various vineyards. To the Tuscans, the word
“cru” has as much to do with the selection process as with
grape-source location. In contrast, in Piedmont, the wine
community word uses the “cru” solely to identify a
particular vineyard and its wine.

Valrhona’s use
of an in-house blending of selected lots as validation for
its “cru” concept is hence quite similar to the Tuscan
understanding of the word, though admittedly Valrhona used
an even more elastic scale. Amedei, a famous Tuscan
chocolate producer, has a I Cru (“The Crus”, in Italian)
assortment of chocolates that uses “cru” in the same spirit.
The individual “crus” are named after countries of origin:
Ecuador, Grenada, Jamaica, Madagascar, Trinidad and
Venezuela. The chocolates are made from selected plantations
within each of the four countries.

If Valrhona’s
and Amedei’s use of the word smacks more of branding than of
terroir, Valrhona’s use of the qualifier “Grand” is
unequivocally proprietary. No legally authorized body has
ever released a classification of the quality of chocolates.
Valrhona is using qualifiers in the same way that many New
World wine producers use the word “reserve”. In New World
wine industries, the use of the word “reserve” on front
labels is strictly proprietary. It means what the proprietor
wants it to mean. Within EU countries, use of the word
“reserve” must be clearly defined by wine law.

In 1994,
Venezuelan chocolate producer El Rey released a line of
chocolates called Carenero Superior which indicated the
origin of cacao beans with reasonable precision. Information
on the wrapper listed a region northeast of Caracas,
Venezuela, famous for cacao, Barlovento. Valrhona took
another dramatic step towards recognizing the individuality
of chocolates when it launched its Chocolats de Domaine
series in 1999. The “domaines” here were plantations. The
first of these domaine chocolates was Gran Couva. Valrhona
has three other single-plantation, vintage-dated chocolates:
Ampamakia, Palmira and the rare Porcelana del Pedregal. At
the Pedregal plantation in Venezuela, Valrhona isolated and
propagated a clonal selection of Porcelana, a rare
high-quality cacao bean. A plantation with a famous
reputation is Chuao, also in Venezuela. Valrhona made a
Chuao Chocolat de Domaine until 2OOO when Amedei secured
exclusive rights to Chuao cacao beans. Amedei now makes its
own plantation-specific chocolate, labeled simply by the
plantation name, Chuao.

When it launched
its Chocolats de Domaine, Valrhona made a further innovation
that gave chocolate even more synergy with wine. They
assigned their Chocolats de Domaine vintage dates according
to the year of the harvest. The first vintage released was
1998. Because of the limitations of restricting cacao
sourcing to a limited area, vintage variation is possible.
Traditionally the heavily branded chocolate industry has
avoided variation among different releases of a line of
chocolates. Because consumers cannot keep track of vintage
reports or remember vintage ratings, they will be confused
by vintage variation. Nonetheless, they can use vintages as
a means to assess chocolate freshness. Chocolate, even
vintage chocolate, does not improve with age. If stored
correctly, it can keep its quality for several years. In
general, it is best to consume chocolate soon after its
release. Valrhona’s vintage dating assumes that chocolate
connoisseurship has reached that associated with fine wine.
No other chocolate company has gone this far.

Domori, an
Italian company, makes plantation bars from beans grown in
its Hacienda San Jose in Venezuela. Using the beans from
this plantation, Domori makes three clonal selection bars.
One called “Puertomar” features the clone, Occumare 61.
Another called “Puertofino” features Occumare 67. Another
called “Porcelana” features the clonal selection, Canoabo.
The three clonal sections are all derived from
Criollo.

Origin
chocolates have become a fashion in the chocolate industry.
Fueling this trend is an increasing connoisseurship in
chocolate appreciation as well as an increasing knowledge
and interest that consumers have in the origin of wine.
Michel Cluizel, a French company, makes a line of chocolates
called “1er cru de Plantation”. The website identifies each
of the “crus” as separate plantations. Richard Perl, CEO and
Chocolate Sommelier of Michel Cluizel USA, which handles
Michel Cluizel’s marketing and sales in the USA, shakes his
head with dismay at how some companies have misused the
moniker “cru” in order to take advantage of its fashion
appeal. He prefers the use of “single plantation” or
“mono-origin”. Perl’s boutique for Michel Cluizel chocolates
in New York City has a liquor license. There he features
pairings of chocolates with wines and spirits.

On the web,
there are sites featuring reviews of chocolates, some with
numerical ratings. The descriptions of appearance, smell and
palate could easily be mistaken for a typical wine note.
Consider Amedei’s description of its Chuao bar: “Chuao,
which takes its name from the Venezuelan peninsula where the
seeds are produced, has an initial flavor of plums, red
fruits and an aromatic and sumptuous roundness.”

Origin-specific
chocolates with few exceptions are of the dark, bitter-sweet
type. Most of these bars have between 6O% and 75% of cacao
mass. The cacao bean contains kernels called nibs. The nibs
are ground into cacao mass. The mass is composed of cacao
and cacao butter. Cacao butter lacks the distinctive
chocolate smell and taste. Some producers may add additional
cacao butter in order to make the chocolate creamier and
less bitter in the mouth. Adding cacao butter throws off the
natural balance of cacao solids and butter in the mass and
hence alters the typicity of the bean. The origin-specific
nature of the chocolate is disturbed even more if the
additional cocoa butter comes from cacao of a different
origin.

The major
addition to chocolate is cane sugar or raw cane sugar juice.
Sugar is essential to balance off the bitterness and
astringency of the cacao. Without sugar, chocolate
bitterness is so high as to make it unpalatable. The
addition of sugar has a parallel in the wine industry. With
respect to wine, grapes contain fruit sugar. Sugar that is
not fermented works in combination with the fermented end
product of sugar – alcohol – to balance wine acidity. If
grapes are sugar-deficient at harvest, sugar can be added to
raise the alcohol of the fermented juice, and thereby
balance off the wine acidity. Too much sugar blended into
the cacao mass or sugar blended improperly will detract from
the origin-specificity of the chocolate.

The addition of
vanilla parallels the use of oak extracts in wine. Vanilla,
coincidentally, is a common smell in oak, particularly in
the American species, Quercus alba. Just as new oak contact
dilutes, even covers, the origin-specificity of wine, the
addition of vanilla to chocolate sacrifices originality for
style. Soy lecithin is an emulsifier and stabilizer. It
keeps the cacao from separating from cacao butter. It also
makes the texture creamier. It too dilutes cacao
origin-specificity.

The producers
whose origin-specific chocolates I tasted showed a range of
sensitivity to the issue of additives. Michel Cluizel
refrains from using soy lecithin. Domori is the ultimate
purist. This company omits vanilla and soy lecithin. It does
not add additional cacao butter. This makes each Domori
origin-specific chocolate taste startlingly different one
from another. Though less polished in style than Michel
Cluizel and Amedei, the taste of Domori chocolates is
delicious despite an almost puritanical production
philosophy.

The
origin-specific chocolates I sampled had a percentage
composition of cacao ranging from 6O% to 75%. It has to be
this high for cacao to express its identity. However, I
tasted a rich and elemental chocolate by Kallari which
contained 85% Cacao. It listed cocoa mass, raw cane juice,
cocoa butter, and vanilla as ingredients. This chocolate,
however, is not location-specific. Numerous farmers with
small non-contiguous plots in the rainforest region of
Ecuador contribute cacao for the blend. This 85% Kalllari
chocolate is an example that dedicated origin-specific
producers should emulate. Kallari chocolate, in addition, is
organic. Pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilizers
subtly blur a chocolate of its place-specific
flavor.

In blind
tastings, it is easier to identify chocolate by the style of
the producer than the origin of the raw materials. Given the
difficulty of origin-specific blind tastings, it would be
precious to assume that unique ideal pairings can be made
between origin-specific dark chocolates and origin-specific
wines, i.e., between cru chocolates and cru wines. A wine
that pairs with one 75% origin-specific dark chocolate will
all pair well with another dark 75%er of a different origin.
Ruby, Tawny, LBV, and Vintage Ports and semi-dry
amontillado, palo cortado and oloroso Sherries always work
well. A heavily extracted, ripe and oaked Syrah or Shiraz
has a good chance of making a good pairing. Dark chocolate
swamps leaner and less fruity wines such as red Bordeaux.
The chocolate lover in search of good pairings beyond sweet
fortified wines should expand his or her selection of
chocolates to include milk and white chocolates.

Chocolate has
recently found itself in the limelight alongside wine for
another reason. Cocoa is richer in antioxidants
(polyphenols) than red wine. Many polyphenols have been
shown to promote cardiovascular health. Given this parallel
and the many others that I have mentioned throughout this
article, at least for the near future interest in “cru” or
mono-origin chocolate will grow. Chocolate aficionados will
redouble their efforts to search out how much terroir they
can discover in their bars.