One of the great aspects of working in craft chocolate is the people you come across. You meet chefs, engineers, environmental activists, racing car designers, opera singers and, this week, a US based team who moved from meditation, yoga and herb gardening to speciality coffee and craft chocolate.

Moka Origins is the creation of Jeff and Ishan. Unlike many craft chocolate makers who start off in their kitchen crafting bars, Jeff and Ishan started on a farm; and not even a cocoa farm. In their own words, Jeff and Ishan came to craft chocolate via what they modestly describe as “humanitarian community development”. Back in 2007, when they were working in Cameroon for the Himalayan Institute growing medicinal herbs, they realised that the key crops for Cameroon of cocoa and coffee had “completely broken” supply chains which was causing huge suffering and hardship for many farmers.

And over the next seven years Jeff and Ishan worked to solve a host of local challenges, while also acquiring more expertise in cocoa, chocolate and coffee, to address this “opportunity”. By 2014 they had assembled a group of cocoa farmers in the Kumbo region of Cameroon, and then in 2015 they were granted 1200 acres of land by the local Cameroonian government. They named the company Moka, a play on the term Mocha, meaning a combination of chocolate and cocoa, as they also grow, and roast, coffee.

And then the really hard work started. The land they’d been granted had no running water, no roads and no electricity. So in addition to finding the best spots to start growing cacao, the team had to build the infrastructure needed; including building wells, an internal road network, solar infrastructure, a river irrigation system and a tree nursery.

In 2017 to complete their ‘tree to bar’ loop, and to turbo charge both their coffee and chocolate initiatives, they built their own factory back at Honesdale, Pennsylvania. And if you are nearby do drop by and say “hi”! For more details, check out our ChocolaTourism page (and indeed, Jeff also runs trips to Africa to visit the farmers in person).

Their bars are also awesome in flavour. Sadly covid, combined with political and social uncertainties, mean that Moka has not been able to import any beans from Cameroon over the last few months; so we don’t (yet!) have their Cameroon beans/bars. But we do have the bars crafted from beans they source from Tanzania, where they work with the like-minded Simran and Brian of Kokoa Kamili. Similarly, please try Moka’s Ugandan bars that are crafted from Jeff Steinberg’s Latitude beans. And if you are subscriber, you should also have received their interpretation of the ABOCFA co-operative’s Ghanaian beans last month. See below for more details on all these bars.

As Dr Kristy Leissle, our ‘go to’ Ghana (and indeed, overall cocoa) expert noted when describing this bar: “Anyone who thinks that Ghana can’t grow amazing beans should try this bar”. And indeed it’s one of the bars we will be tasting, and discussing, with her, virtually and in person, at a special tasting session (you can book tickets to attend at our London office, or buy the kit to taste along at home). There is also an awesome dark milk produced from these ABOCFA beans, which you’ll find below.

To celebrate the fifth anniversary of their Honesdale factory, Moka also released some heart warming statistics of what they achieved, including:

• Planting over 230,000 trees (from mango and avocado to cacao and banana trees),
• Purchasing over 58,000 kilos of beans,
• Roasting over 96,000 kilos of coffee beans,
• Crafting over 117,000 bars (note: That didn’t include the ones we’ve recently imported),
• And supporting over 10,000 farmers and their families to secure a “sustainable living wage” that they can rely on over the long term.

See below for more details on all their bars, and see their page for their incredible story.

As ever, thank you for your support.

Spencer

P.S. Do remember that you can taste Moka’s ABOCFA bar, and five other great bars with Kristy in person or virtually on the 17th June.

P.P.S. For a sneak peak at our plans for Father’s Day, including a box comprising bars made by father’s with their daughters (and sons), check out our new page.

With the Jubilee bank holiday weekend fast approaching, we are, once again, reminded of our collective ‘freedom’. Whatever you have planned, whether that is a street party, a BBQ (fingers crossed on the weather), or escaping the UK altogether, the shadow of covid means that we still feel grateful that these events are possible. And wherever, and however, you are celebrating may we recommend our Jubilee Commonwealth box for a tour of twelve different regions of the Commonwealth, our milk and dark Jubilee four bar box sets or our ‘make your own’ lollipop sets?

With this freedom in mind and following the success of our chocolate tasting evenings earlier in the year, we have lots of exciting in-person events planned throughout the summer. Chatting with people who share our enthusiasm for speciality products is really rewarding. It’s equally rewarding to bring together like-minded craft chocolate fans. As many of you know, one of our aims is to create a community of chocolate lovers, and hosting these events makes this aim a reality.

Therefore, we are starting with a discussion with  cocoa scholar Dr. Kristy Leissle on the 17th June. We had the pleasure of speaking to Kristy last year, busting various myths about African chocolate. Following an overwhelming response to continue our conversation with Kristy, our next event will focus on “disease, death, and divorce”. This will be a hybrid event, with a limited number of in person tickets, as well as the opportunity to buy the kit and join in via Zoom.

We’ve been long-term fans of ALSO Festival (partly due to their long tradition of wild swimming!): An incredible weekend of music, comedy, food, and, in their own words, ‘ideas’. Even though they successfully created a hybrid festival last year (hosting both virtual and in person events), we were thrilled that we can get out our tents and join the crowds from the 8th-10th of July. 

Regularly in the The Sunday Times ‘best festivals’ list and described by The Independent as “a place to revel in nature and discuss the big ideas”, ALSO is more than a regular festival. We are delighted to be hosting several events, including a ‘Beginners Tasting Masterclass’ and a ‘Taste and Flavours Tour Around the World’.

And, for those of you who are fans of our resident whisky expert Rachel McCormack, she will also be exploring Scotland’s best whiskies. Appealing to the avid foodies, there’s countless brilliant events, including a sake tasting masterclass, a food illustration class, a foraging walk, a talk simply titled ‘tomatoes’, and many, many more – and that’s just the food side!

ALSO have been kind enough to give our customers an extra discount on ticket prices; use the exclusive code RUNWILD22 for 15% off their exciting events! Please secure your tickets HERE.

Next, we are back to 13 Charterhouse Square for some very special ‘maker-focused’ evenings. We take a lot of pride in our family of craft chocolate makers and, since many of them are international, it is a real pleasure to meet them. With this thought in mind, we thought it would be fantastic if you could also meet the world’s best chocolate makers, including Pedro Martins Araújo, the founder of Vinte Vinte. 

We are in the final stages of launching Vinte Vinte, and to celebrate this partnership, we thought we’d host a very special tasting with Pedro himself; or, more accurately, a tasting party! This will involve tasting his incredible bars, understanding more about his craft chocolate journey, and raising a toast to the Vinte Vinte brand (a range of Taylor’s white, tawny and ruby ports will be provided). A very limited number of tickets can be purchased HERE and below.

We are keen to host more parties with our makers, particularly as many of you have long-established relationships with our brands. Since one of our most beloved makers, Chocolarder, are turning 10 this year, we thought another party was in order. Join us, alongside Chocolarder’s founder Mike Longman, on the 8th September to celebrate their fantastic achievements while tasting the results of a decade’s worth of hard work. And we’ve more maker specific events planned; see HERE  for more details about the whole range.

Please see below to secure your tickets for these brilliant in person events. Tasting events at our 13 Charterhouse Square space are intimate evenings, and therefore we only have a limited amount of tickets; we’d recommend buying now to avoid disappointment.

Finally, we hope you have a glorious bank holiday weekend and a well-deserved rest. We look forward to meeting more of you this summer and these events.

The Cocoa Runners team.

Starting this month we have a new regular virtual tasting focused on flavour, taste, super-tasters and more. And you DON’T have to paint your tongue blue (we’ve an easier test)!

We’ve also some great new ‘one-off’ tastings for the rest of this year (some which we think will make great Christmas presents too):

• We’ve another intriguing set of wine and chocolate pairings with Bex and Ida from Corney & Barrow (see here). 
• Whisky guru Rachel McCormack will be doing a virtual pairing of three whiskies with a bunch of chocolates (see here). 
• Sunday Brunch’s Simon Rimmer will be cooking up a (craft chocolate) Figgy Pudding and, along with Steve Tapril, showing how to make some great cocktails live on zoom (see here).

And, again, please do join us at Canopy Market from the 15-17th October. We still have some tickets for the tastings and pairings on Friday and Sunday (Saturday is almost completely sold out!). And, we’ve just added a cocktail session with Kate, Alice and Rachel on Friday evening which will be using cacao pulp to make some intriguing combinations. And we are DELIGHTED that the one and only Mikkel Friis Holm will be coming over from Denmark to attend Canopy Market!

Our New Flavour (And Super-taster) Virtual Tasting

If you are puzzled by the above blue tongue image, or interested in taste and flavour and/or enjoy craft chocolate, please do come to our new flavour-focused regular craft chocolate tasting that we are going to hold ‘virtually’ every other Thursday.

We promise not to paint your tongue blue! But we will help you check if you are a “super taster”, and explain why being a super-taster isn’t really that “super”.

Taste is something we perceive via taste buds in our mouth (largely on our tongue) but also in our throat, stomach and even further down. And it covers the sensations of salty, sweet, bitter, sour and (arguably) a few others including umami (like the taste of MSG), kokumi and fattiness (read more about this in Chocopedia).

And as we explore in our regular tasting, taste is VERY different to flavour, astringency and texture; and we’ll explore this in far more depth in our upcoming new virtual tastings. Plus, in this new virtual tasting on Thursdays we’re going to taste 10 different bars from Fresco, Latitude, Zotter (including their butter caramel bar), Pralus and Menakao. And we will discuss and explore:

• How sugar, flavour and astringency work together, and compare this to how saltiness interacts with other tastes,
• How roasting and conching chocolate (and food in general) made civilisation possible, and why only humans ‘get’ this (and why “raw chocolate” is nonsense),
• The way that words and texture can massively affect your experience of chocolate,
• How food science can create some amazing sensations, but why we need to beware how mass, processed chocolate abuses this,
• Whether ‘super-tasters’ experience chocolate differently (a world first experiment).

We hope you’ll come away having had a tonne of fun! We also hope that you will discover some new bean origins, inclusions and makers. Plus, in a virtual and interactive way, we hope to offer some more insights in the art and science of craft chocolate farming and making.

As before, we have smaller kits for a single person, or couple, for £19.95 (with taster bars), and then deluxe, or ‘family-size’ kits (with full bars) for £34.95. And we’ll be holding the tasting regularly on every other Thursday at 8pm, UK time.

So what is a ‘super-taster’ (and why does it involve painting your tongue blue)?

If you paint your tongue blue you will be able to see how many fungiform papillae (a.k.a. taste receptors) you have; see the picture above. And this, in turn, may explain how sensitive you are to bitterness (and other tastes).

Way back in the 1930s, chemists and geneticists discovered a simpler way than painting peoples tongues and counting taste receptors to determine taste receptiveness. As with so many taste discoveries, it was the product of an accident. In 1931, a Dupont chemist called Arthur Fox accidentally spilled a chemical powder called PTC (phenylthiocarbamide) and was puzzled when some laboratory technicians violently reacted to the “bitter dust” they could taste whereas others had no reaction. He then worked with Albert Blakesley, a geneticist, to figure out the cause of this peculiarity; and they determined it was at least partially genetic. In the 1960s, another compound, prop (short for propylthiouracil), was discovered by Roland Fischer with similar attributes (this is the one you’ll get to try at our tastings). And then in the 1980s Linda Bartoshuk popularised the term “super-tasters” to describe the approximately 25% of the population who are very sensitive to these chemicals (women are a higher proportion) and differentiated them from the 50-60% of people who are able to detect some bitterness and the 15-25% of the population don’t detect anything from PTC or prop.

Scientists are still debating exactly what gives rise to these differences. They’ve confirmed that this ‘super tasting’ is at least partially related to the presence of a specific bitter-taste-receptor gene (TAS2R38). Indeed, before the likes of 23andMe and other genetic testing services, sensitivity to bitterness was one tool often use to detect family genetics. But there also appear to be some environmental factors too.

…and what does being a super-taster mean?

Scientists also debate the evolutionary advantages of being a super-taster and being more sensitive to bitterness. One possible advantage from a historical and evolutionary perspective is that many poisons and toxins are very alkaloid and therefore very bitter. But that’s hard to prove.

In the modern world there a range of pros and cons which are associated with being a supertaster: If you are a supertaster, you may struggle with some bitter green vegetables that are actually very good for you. You may also not enjoy some alcohols. And (good news), you may be less likely to enjoy smoking. You may also enjoy sweetness in various foods, although this is NOT about having a sweet tooth or being addicted to sugar.

It’s also important to note that we all have a lot of different taste receptors. The super-taster tests using prop and PTC test one specific bitter taste receptor. And for bitterness alone we have over 35 receptor types, and they aren’t just on our tongues (they are in our guts, reproductive organs, thyroid glands, etc.). So you may also be highly sensitive to other bitter, and indeed other tastes, too, but we don’t yet have many simple tests for this.

In the world of wine, much work has been done on how being a super-taster impacts your ability to taste wine and your wine preferences. To date the results have been unclear or not that illuminating. For example; there are various reports that suggest supertasters avoid tannic red wines because they may be too bitter, but this seems a bit simplistic and may confuse astringency and bitterness.

Super-tasting and Chocolate

As far as we know, no-one has ever carried out research on how super-tasters react to different chocolates. So we’d like to see if our new virtual tastings can (anonymously) detect any preferences or trends relating to different roasts, conches, milks and percentages in craft chocolates.

We plan to use menti.com (our interactive tool, so you can share your feedback with one another in real time on the screen even if you aren’t presenting) and some surveys.

Spoiler alert: We don’t think that appreciation of craft chocolate is really about how sweet or bitter a chocolate is. We suspect it’s more about the way that the farmer and maker have coaxed out different flavours from their beans. But perhaps you’ll help us with a new scientific discovery and breakthrough. So we’d LOVE your help to do some live research on this. And we can promise the opportunity to try some really great craft chocolates. And no blue tongues!

We really look forward to seeing you at one of these virtual tastings and also at Canopy Market in London (and if you can’t make it, you can register HERE for post-show videos and info).

Spencer

P.S. Bronwen Percival of Neal’s Yard Dairy did a fantastic comparison of artisan cheese and craft chocolate earlier this week. If you missed it; and even though you may not have the chocolate; there is a recording available on our YouTube channel.