Chocolate: How This Most Coveted Snack of all Time is Grown

Chocolate: How This Most Coveted Snack of all Time is Grown

The next time you hold a scrumptious bar of chocolate in your hand and are just a few seconds away from devouring it, think about that magnificent, gooey goodness as being something that should be relished and appreciated leisurely and for as long as you can- after all, finished chocolate is the end result of an extensive, laborious process.

As you may well know, chocolate is sourced from the cacao or cocoa bean, which grows only in tropical areas of the world- more specifically, in geographical regions that receive heavy rainfall and span 20 degrees north to south of the equator. The cacao pod is big and rugby shaped and sprouts from the trunk of the cacao tree. The chocolate magic lies within these swollen pods that consist of approximately 40 beans, which in turn are engulfed in a thick, sticky, and white pulp crucial to the development of flavour in the beans.

It is a must for a cacao seedling to be planted near taller trees whose leaves can shield the former from harsh, direct sunlight and rough winds. However, the plant can grow well without protection once it is several years old. The fruit or pods grow only after the plant has reached a certain level of maturity, which is around 3-5 years.

Unknown to many, the cacao plant is highly vulnerable and susceptible to pests, disease, and damage due to other environmental factors, which deems it a rather delicate plant. In fact, a whopping one third of all cacao trees get damaged each year due to disease and pest invasions.
What adds to the already exclusive nature of cacao or cocoa is the fact that the tree is not very productive. Considering its size, a cacao plant yields just about 30 good quality pods or a thousand beans annually- and it takes 500 cacao beans to produce a mere pound of rich, heavenly dark chocolate. At best, one cacao tree produces enough cocoa for just 2 pounds of dark chocolate.

Most of the world’s chocolate has its origins in small family farms that span less than 12 acres, a huge bulk of which are located in West Africa. The process of cacao farming itself is highly labor-intensive, with a majority of the work- right from planting, harvesting, and fermenting- being done by hand. Ripened cacao pods are brown in color and have to be picked individually and with utmost care since they don’t ripen all at the same time.

During the pod picking process, farmers mostly use large knives or machetes strung to sturdy poles to pick the ripened pods carefully without disturbing or even remotely brushing the surfaces of the other pods.

After the pods are taken down, they are split open by hand, and the cacao beans are scooped out. The white pulp inside the shell has a tart, slightly acidic flavour, while the beans themselves are extremely bitter. The beans are then stored temporarily before being fermented, heated, and have their natural sugars converted to acetic and lactic acids.

This whole stage is undertaken to transform the flavour of the beans from being bitter to something that is more rich and earthy.
After fermentation, cacao beans are dried thoroughly till they lose their moisture content and are cleaned and sorted according to their grade. Beans that do not meet the quality standards are disposed of. These processes are only the initial stages in the entire manufacturing process that involves roasting, shelling, shipping, processing, and packaging.

So the next time you pop in some Hershey’s Kisses in your salivating mouth, sip on some comforting hot chocolate, or savor a warm, inviting chocolate doughnut, reminisce on the long, distant journey that cocoa has been on just to make your taste buds dance with the utmost joy!