Shawn Askinosie checks in on the fermentation of cocoa beans in San Jose Del Tambo, Ecuador.
I first tasted Askinosie chocolates while visting Food & Wine magazine in 2007 (you may remember that I was featured in the June issue that year). They gave me a tour of the offices and test kitchen where we came upon a box of chocolates that the staff of Food & Wine had been swooning over. They gave me several varieties of little sample bars and as soon as I left the building, I unwrapped each one and popped them in my mouth. Charly and I both agreed: the best we’ve ever had - by far.
When we were scooping our ice cream at Slow Foods in San Francisco in September 2008, we met Shawn Askinosie who was also there giving out chocolates. He came out, gave big hugs and we’ve been trying to work together since. It’s not just flavor, it’s a community of good people making great flavor. That’s what this is about.
Askinosie Chocolate makes bean-to-bar, single-origin chocolates in Springfield, Missouri. A lot of folks talk up their fair-trade practices, but Shawn and his team actually get on a plane and visit the farmers who grow their cocoa. They work side by side with the farmers to select the perfect bean. And then, after making and selling the chocolate in Missouri, they come back and share 10% of the net profits from the beans. When Shawn Askinosie says he makes fair-trade chocolate, that is what he means.
(Continue after the jump to read about Askinosie's 70-step process...)
BEAN TO BAR. Cocoa beans drying on bamboo.
Their 70-step process begins with a trip to meet prospective cocoa farmers in places like: San Jose Del Tambo, Ecuador; Davao, Philippines; and the Socunusco region of Mexico. Shawn picks the farmers before he picks the beans. That way Shawn and the farmers can select which variety of bean to grow and how to develop the ideal method to farm and process them. This ground-level involvement ensures top quality and flavor.
From there, the Askinosie team makes their cocoa and chocolate in-house. The steps from raw cocoa bean to chocolate bar reveal cocoa nibs, liquor and cocoa butter (a product many other chocolate makers, even so-called single-origin, source in bulk from industrial chocolate producers).
The final step in the long journey from bean to bar is when Shawn revisits the cocoa farm to give farmers 10% of the net profit from the chocolate made from their beans. The way Shawn sees it, if cocoa farmers’ profits are based on the sales of the chocolate made from their beans, they will work harder to produce the highest-quality beans.
And those are just a few of the steps Askinosie Chocolate takes to make the best chocolate you'll ever taste. Visit their website and click on the "how we do it" link to read about the rest.
We are over-the-moon in-love with Askinosie Dark Milk Chocolate (complete with solid chocolate frippery), and I hope that you will agree. It is available at all the stores (pints only) and online (pints only)!
I had the Askinosie Dark Milk Chocolate paired with Black Coffee. It was purely divine! So glad to read it's fair trade.
Posted by: Jenny O | September 20, 2010 at 11:45 AM