Honest, sustainable, bean-to-bar chocolate is changing the country’s chocolate narrative
One night, while scanning the fridge for an impulsive midnight craving, we stumbled upon 'Matcha Prince and The Blue Pea', a white chocolate bar with blue pea tea and blueberries that we had picked up from Goa airport on the recommendation of a dear friend. White chocolate isn't our first choice of chocolate, and there was no matcha in the bar, but the creative packaging and whimsical description caught our attention. Besides, when we checked for its origins — East Godavari — we were immediately sold. The quality of cocoa beans produced in Andhra Pradesh is now comparable to the world’s best beans produced in Ghana.
As supermarket aisles dedicated to craft chocolate brands get wider, the exquisite melange of assorted ingredients and flavour medleys leaves consumers spoilt for choice. Their design-forward packaging offers a fine print on where the cacao beans are sourced from and their excursion into making the bar you hold in your hand.
Choc-o-block
The journey of cacao from a tree to a bar — irrespective of the brand — hasn’t always been a delicious story. That glistening, smooth, melt-in-mouth bar you probably paid a premium for is made with beans that often undergo the most unhygienic fermentation and drying processes, and are left unattended outside some farmer's humble home or at a farm collective's storehouse and roasting — the less said, the better. Except that the high degree to which the sun-dried beans are roasted at, helps kill the contamination. Processing the beans helps derive a thick liquid called cocoa liquor and cocoa butter, which are essential to chocolate making (and cosmetics). Enroute to his plantation by the Godavari River, Akhil Grandhi, founder of Bonne Fiction, explains, "Farmers put the harvested beans in crate-size boxes, let the pulp drain and leave it to dry in the sun. Commercial players buy these because the cacao's flavour profile doesn't matter to them; they alkalise the beans and high roast them anyway — all they want is a base chocolate flavour; the rest is masked by flavouring and additives."
Craft chocolate, on the other hand, is an entirely different deck. Made by hand in small batches, the velvety smooth texture and subtle, nuanced flavours make it unique. Grandhi continues, "In craft chocolate, we showcase the natural flavour of the cacao bean; for that, we can't alkalise or high roast them. We need high-quality beans that are fermented, dried, and roasted correctly. Our farm and fermentary are also close to ensuring smooth transitioning." For long, beans from the Godavari region were seen negatively. "They were highly acidic. We had to train people with technical expertise to process the beans correctly to extract the right flavour profile until they began to realise the true potential of the beans in this region," he adds.
Being honest with the craft
The craft chocolate movement, set up mainly by expatriates in Kerala, Pondicherry, and Mysuru, is still nascent and is primarily driven by small-batch ‘bean-to-bar’ makers. The story started in India in 2008-09 and gained momentum roughly ten years ago when brands like Paul & Mike, Soklet, Maison & Co, and Chitra'm Chocolates took over the reins of family-run farms that grew cacao as a mere intercrop. They understood that farming and fermenting cocoa is both art and science and implemented it firsthand.
Entrepreneurs like Nitin Chordia, who had taken a chocolate tasting course in the UK, worked at understanding the process of chocolate-making and finally worked with farmers and craft chocolatiers to help them set up shop. Later, he started his brand, Kokotrait, and formally announced his academy, Cocoshala, which offers bean-to-bar chocolate training courses and programmes.
Arun Vishwanathan, founder, Chitra'm Chocolates, is a food technologist from Cornell University and a doctorate holder in agri-business management. He became a chocolatier out of a passion for creating flavours that speak of traditions and tell nostalgic stories. A 2nd-level certified chocolate taster and six-time winner of international chocolate awards across various categories, he started his brand in 2017 as a tribute to his mother, which today is known for its unconventional flavour combinations. Think moringa, lemon white chocolate, and Holy Trio of mango, jackfruit, and bananas, among other exciting flavours, inducing nostalgia and tapping into your core memories of growing up in a country rich with flavours and practices surrounding food. While the brand presents itself in bars and bonbons, Chitra’m has over 20 hot chocolate flavours, cacao molagapodi, cacao pickle, and many more chocolate-based products. He also runs Infusion Cafe in Coimbatore, serving exotic chocolate desserts and signature hot chocolates.
Trained in Belgium in 2013, Vishwanathan also conducted workshops for those who wanted to start their venture through Cocotown. "Couverture chocolate only got recognised in India after 2013 and more around 2017. However, the craft market is expensive and mostly preferred for gifting or making decadent desserts. Most cacao beans grown in India are used for industrial use as they have a vast market. In perspective, an order for craft chocolate would be 500 kgs of beans per year versus an industrial order for 500 tons annually — so obviously, the farmer finds the latter more lucrative. In the global market, cacao is an industrial commodity exchange. Fine flavour cacao has always kept itself above industrial commodities; however, with a reduction in output and increasing prices, the buffer between these two is reducing rapidly, causing a hike in the prices here, too," says Vishwanathan.
Cacao by the river
According to the directorate of Cashewnut and Cocoa Development, a national agency primarily engaged in the overall development of cashew and cocoa, cacao is being cultivated in the states of Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu in an area of 1,03,376 hectares with a total production of 27,072 metric tonnes. Andhra Pradesh ranks first in area with 39,714 hectares and a production of 10,903 metric tonnes, and between Andhra Pradesh and Kerala, nearly 80 per cent of the total produce is accounted for. Every year, the area of cocoa cultivation is increasing by 5,000 hectares on average. Interestingly, in less than two-and-a-half decades since cacao was introduced as an intercrop in coconut groves, the west Godavari district has become the largest producer of cocoa in the State.
Grandhi tells us that the Godavari region scores over Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka because plantations here are only in two districts — east and west Godavari, the country's largest cacao-growing region versus the other states, where plantations are spread across the state. "Logistics are consolidated. Also, the harvest time in Kerala and Karnataka is during the monsoon season, which poses even more logistical challenges, whereas, in Godavari Districts, it is from December to May, making it less formidable."
Cacao is not indigenous to India. It is believed that when Cadbury (Mondelez) introduced the first cocoa tree to the country in 1965, the focus was on yield, not genetics. Currently, we grow only 5.1 million metric tonnes, and while we hope for more cacao production, that's relatively small compared to the global market. "Unless we make cacao a speciality, we won't stand a chance competing with the other cacao-producing countries," says Chaitanya Muppala, Founder of Manam Chocolate and Distinct Origins, India’s first LVL3 certified chocolate taster, adding, "The Indian market has only 0.25 per cent of the global share — our production is negligible. Sadly, we export good quality butter and coverture and import 70 per cent powder to make low-quality compounds for our chocolates."
Come to think of it, international brands like Barry Callebaut — despite setting up three factories and academies in India — source their cocoa from the Ivory Coast, Ghana, and Ecuador. Cacao is a political crop and countries like the Ivory Coast that survive on cacao production, where it alone is responsible for more than 7.5 per cent of the Ivorian GDP, have vested interests. Mupalla continues, "In India, what we are doing right is that we aren't chopping down trees, our farms are not on deforested lands, and our cacao is child labour-free, with strict regulations in place — these are a few of the reasons for the Indian cacao to shine globally in the coming years. The Indian farmer is better off than their counterparts; they have a smartphone and are constantly checking NASDAQ and putting out selling prices accordingly. The problem is that Indian farmers are fickle-minded and will always invest in lucrative crops — coconut, oil palms, or sunflower oil — whatever is in demand. Cocoa prices have more than doubled since the beginning of the year, driven by the worst supply shortage in 40 years. It's a 220-per cent hike, so the price could motivate them to grow cacao right now."
Make in India
With the rise in demand, cacao plantations in Goa and Karnataka are scaling up. Mupalla says, "They are growing cacao in Guwahati too. According to the thumb rule, the cacao-growing regions worldwide are 20 degrees north and 20 degrees south of the equator. The value of cacao depends on several factors, including harvest, fermentation, drying, and roasting. In the Indian cacao story, what we've lost to genetics, we are trying to make up for in post-harvest by shifting the focus back to the Indian cacao’s untapped flavour potential. Through long-term partnerships with more than 100 farmer-member communities and radical advancements in fermentation and drying techniques at our one-of-a-kind cacao fermentery, we are unlocking a new world of flavours for craft chocolate makers around the globe."
Mupalla is focused on bringing west Godavari cacao to the forefront of the chocolate world. At Chocoa 2024 in February in Amsterdam, there were queues of people wanting to try Manam's 100 percent dark chocolate. "It shook off the notion of Indian cacao as acidic, imbalanced cacao — the proof was in the chocolate. When we started, we aimed to make available fine-flavour cacao from India, and Chocoa made us realise we were on the right track," says Mupalla.
Unlike craft beer or wine, there are no industry standards for craft chocolate, so the onus lies on small-batch chocolate makers to ensure their labels clearly state the ingredients and origin of their chocolate bars. At the moment, Indian beans are not something people are running after, but that will change. It will be a while before that takes off," concludes Akhil.