Today, we visited the Sibö chocolate farm for a discussion about the history of chocolate and how they make it. The word chocolate comes from the native Indians from Central America. As the discussion went along, we had a tasting of the seven different chocolates. This was a good way to stay engaged because after discussing a part of the history behind how chocolate has evolved, we would taste that specific chocolate. Chocolate started off to be around 2 dollars when it was first sold, but went up to about 16 dollars so the farmers would make more money. Chocolate is cheap compared to wine or perfumes, so the farmers do not like to grow cacao because they do not get paid for it. Cacao grows in the shade of other trees. When ready, the cacao is cut open and the placenta is taken off of the pits inside. The pits are then put into a bin and covered in order for them to be composted. Dry cacao beans are placed under the sun and roast for 7 days. They use a fan in the green room they are in to prevent the beans from becoming sour or over fermented. If they dry to slow, the cacao will taste like dirt. If they are over fermented, they will create lactic acid, which gives chocolate the taste of rotten cheese or vomit. Vinegar is what gives chocolate a nice taste. My favorite of our chocolate samples was the chocolate with the smooth caramel inside.

The history of how chocolate came to be is very interesting, so I will name off some fun facts. They used to drink the chocolate. The natives told the Spaniards to continuing drinking the chocolate in order to cure Monteverde’s Revenge. The cacao beans were used as money because of how scarce they were. The Swiss made a machine so that people did not have to ground the cacao themselves like they were previously doing. Lindt, as in Lindt chocolate, became famous after incorrectly using the machine. He left the machine on over the weekend and realized that 72 hours makes the cacao ground so small that it melts in your mouth. Daniel Peter came up with adding milk to the chocolate, but after a week the milk would go bad and be sour. Nestle, who was interested in milk not chocolate, decided to dehydrate the milk to make it a powder. This fixed Peter’s problem and they became partners. Richard Cadbury came up with the chocolate Easter egg in order to get children to get the chocolate as it is considered a drug. During WWI, chocolate became a necessity. Soldiers needed it to fight their battle because they did not have enough food. During WWII, chocolate became a fighting food. Hershey made large quantities of chocolates for the soldiers. Since chocolate cannot have both quantity and quality, the Hershey chocolates did not taste good. Hershey started to extract the cacao butter, but did not want to waste it. Hollywood used it for cosmetic products for their actresses as they produced new colored movies. The cacao butter was also used for white chocolate. White chocolate is not real chocolate as it consists of only fat, sugar, and powdered milk. I found this talk very informative and am happy that we got to have a taste of the Sibö chocolates.

At Sibö there are workers from all over the world: Germany, Nicaragua, El Salvador. Coffee and chocolate have to go through several steps to get to the final product. They both involve planting the trees and waiting a certain amount of time for the fruits to form. Then, they need to be cut open to either get to the coffee or cacao bean. The beans must be dried completely and then go through a roasting process. Both coffee and chocolate have different flavors when slight changes are made in their making process. With coffee there are the light, medium, dark roasts and more, and chocolate has milk chocolate and the different percentages of dark chocolate. Some of the challenges in the chocolate supply chain are the prices of the different chocolates. Because Sibö focuses on quality, they have competition of other chocolate companies selling cheaper products. Chocolate also has to be transported by airplane because as well all know it melts. Companies like Sibö, Britt, and Riverside all are very focused on sustainability. Riverside is a farm and Italian restaurant that we went to for lunch. They product most of their own electricity and cook the pizzas on coffee wood. They all grow there own products with the exception of Britt growing their coffee through Doka. Sibö does not use plastic boxes for their chocolates, all of their packaging is biodegradable. All three of these places care about producing their products the correct way and aim to produce quality items.