Some shots of myself working in the Letterpress shop, creating the packaging for the new Piura bar.

Our new Piura Bar’s origin:

These are difficult times. No doubt all of you are touched by the remarkable circumstances that life has brought our way. Surely these shifts have changed the daily dynamic of many of your lives. I know that they have mine. Of course, being a chocolate maker is a remarkably frustrating avocation, let alone vocation. With that in mind I have a little hope today, and a lot of gratitude for the people who have been supporting me during these trials. I must say, having chocolate readily on hand helps.

New Bar – Rio Caribe

With all of that said, I have a couple of bits of great news. I am sending this email out to notify all of you that I have a new bar available! As many of you know I have been working on procuring an origin in Venezuela for 8-9 months now. I was hoping very much to have it out of the country in time for Christmas, but developing countries don’t tend to lend themselves to tight scheduling. Unfortunately, while I had initially hoped to bring in a few tons via shipping container there was an issue with Chavez apparently putting a stop on ocean freight. Therefore I have just brought in a half ton via air-freight. As many of you know, this is not cheap. In fact it effectively nearly doubles the cost of the cacao versus ocean freight. In addition, due to the credit market situation at the time of this transaction, I have only been provided Net 30 terms. This is not the best situation, but it is not the worst either. I am very excited to get this cacao in. I think the chocolate is great!

This new bar is made with cacao from Rio Caribe. Rio Caribe is a select grade fully fermented Trinitario cacao from the area of the Paria Peninsula in Sucre State. The Paria Peninsula is in far eastern Venezuela and nearly touches Trinidad. This incidentally is also the area where most of the region’s oil operations are located. This particular lot is from a single estate, and one of the oldest family-owned cacao businesses in Venezuela. As a matter of fact, I have been told that this is more or less the only exporter that has not been ruined in recent years. I have been in direct contact with the owners for all of these months and am really glad to finally be working with them. We will be the first company in the US to put out a single origin Rio Caribe bar. To the best of my knowledge there is only one other company in the world doing a single origin of this variety (Domori). As with the other current bars, this bar will be a 70%. The flavors of this cocoa are really fun! There are really forward cocoa and coffee flavors, and then deep dairy and nut flavors, hints of dark citrus and spices. This bar is very uncharacteristic of the rest of my current offerings, and that is what I think is so fun about it.

Valentine’s Day Deals

The other good news is that I will be keeping my package deals through Valentines day because they have been so popular. So, this is your last chance to get a really great deal. Nothing says “I love you” like chocolate from Rogue Chocolatier!

I want to thank you all again for all of your continued support. I also want everybody to know that I am looking for stores to carry my chocolate. If you have any ideas or suggestions of places near you, please let me know. I love finding fun places with passionate staff that can show new people what I am trying to do.

Happy Valentines Day!

In case you missed it, we were very fortunate to be on the Martha Stewart show recently. It is up on the website archives still. 

View the show

The MPR piece below was originally intended to be a Marketplace piece. Here is the Marketplace version.

Marketplace: Betting on premium chocolate lovers

I was lucky enough to be on MPR again a couple of weeks ago. This was during the week when my father came out from Massachusetts to help me install my dehumidification system. Needless to say, that machine was much harder to install than I had anticipated.

MPR: Not even a slow economy can keep people from their chocolate

These are some pictures from a trip to the Dominican Republic I took this spring to evaluate and purchase machines. 

	Cacao tree
	An opened under ripe cacao pod.
	Fermentation box filled with beans in a cascading box fermentary. The beans will be rotated through a series of 3 boxes, one every 48 hours. This is the basic fermentation methodology that comprises most of the better co-ops and exporters.
	Next the beans are dried slowly on elevated beds or concrete patios. In this case a solar dryer, which looks a lot like a greenhouse with vents in the top and sides. The beans must be turned every 15-20 minutes constantly for around 6-8 days to make the best quality product. Failing to do this part properly can lead to a variety of problems.
	Melangeur-broyeur in all its rough glory. A set of two rollers of about 800 lbs. roll over a warmed granite pan that rotates. This gently crushes the roasted and winnowed cocoa nibs. It also mixes sugar as it is incorporated. I will be repainting, installing a new drive system, and developing a new heating method for the pan.
	Longitudunal Conche. This needs some serious work. This machine follows the original design of the conche developed by Rudi Lindt in 1879. This is the mechanism that created the eating chocolate that we think of today when we think of chocolate. Prior to 1879 most chocolate was consumed in the form of drinking chocolate 4 steel troughs with rounded ends. In each pot a granite roller reciprocates back and forth over a granite base, changing the flavor and texture of the chocolate through aeration, heating, and shearing. This is considered by many to be the best machine for making chocolate. I have been cutting the granite bases out with a huge 14 inch diamond cut off saw normally used for road construction. I will be modernizing and automating the drive and heating, as well as cleaning, sandblasting, welding, installing new stones, repainting, installing new bearings, building new sides, etc. Lots of fun.

We received mentions in two recent L.A. Times articles!

Article One:

Think chocolate can’t get any better? These Willy Wonkas beg to differ – The latest wave of cocoa hunters is seizing control, from bean to bar

Article Two:

Chocolate made in America

WCCO Television, the Twin Cities affiliate of CBS, recently featured Colin Gasko of Rogue Chocolatier in a story aired on Feb 14, 2008 – Valentine’s Day. “What Makes Chocolate so Delicious?”

Watch the video at wcco.com.