Sweet delights
You wouldn’t really expect a brand of chocolate to be described as ‘matured’ or ‘vintage’ or even ‘aged’. That’s parlance used in the single malt whisky hemisphere, co-opted here by To’ak, a luxury chocolate brand that produces the world’s most expensive chocolate.
Founded by Austrian designer Carl Schweizer, American conservationist Jerry Toth and fourth-generation cacao farmer Servio Pachard as a means of marrying rainforest conservation with premium chocolate in Ecuador, To’ak’s mission is to transform the way the world experiences dark chocolate, elevating its making and tasting to the level of vintage wine and aged whisky. It’s fitting, given that chocolate originated from the rainforests of South America, prized by the Incas, Mayans and Aztecs.
All To’ak chocolates are single origin, vocabulary shared with another commodity-turned-luxury (coffee), sourced from 14 cacao growers in the Piedra de Plata valley in Ecuador. Here is where the heirloom Arriba cacao trees grow, possibly the last few remaining in the world, which To’ak regularly confirms as the Nacional variety using DNA tests. Once harvested, the beans are brought to the Finca Sarita farm for processing, in exchange for payment that follows the USDA Organic and Fair Trade guidelines. Here they are processed/fermented in Spanish Elm through 36 gruelling steps.
To’ak chocolate is dark chocolate, the best way to truly enjoy chocolate as it has the highest concentration of flavonoids, the same compounds that flavour wine. Each year produces only a limited amount of chocolate bars – some 600 – split into individual limited edition series for consumption.
The Vintage 2014 series, for example, were all aged for 18 months – in cognac casks (US$345/RM1,435) or a Spanish Elm wood vessels (US$315/RM1,310), with only 100 examples of each produced. Then there is the slightly – but only just slightly – more available 2015 Rain Harvest, with 250 bars each of Dark (80.5% cacao percentage, US$270/RM1,122) and Light (73% cacao, US$270/RM1,122) produced. The 2016 harvest series not yet been released, but when it is, it will be enjoyed the way all To’ak chocolates are enjoyed: hammered into a 42 gram thin bar, with a hand-selected roasted bean in the middle. Each To’ak bar is presented in a handmade Spanish Elm wood box, individually numbered, containing a 116-page information booklet and a pair of wooden tongs – so oil from your fingers don’t mar the To’ak’s texture.
It might seem frivolous, but To’ak takes its chocolate seriously. The word itself is derived from Ecuadorian dialect, meaning ‘earth’ and ‘tree’ – the elements that create chocolate. It’s the To’ak parallel to the French terroir, tying into its mission to deliver the best, and certainly most delicious, chocolate to the world.
