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Chloé Doutré is known throughout the world as one of the specialists in quality chocolate. The author of a book on the subject, a member of the Chocolate Academy of Ecuador, she has traveled the world searching and learning how to improve the personality of the raw material, cocoa, which is the soul of a good chocolate. Although most settle for cheap, low-quality chocolate, the expert looks for those chocolates “that really transmit the personality of cocoa.”
Listening to Chloé Doutré talk about cocoa and chocolate is a sensory experience. When it comes to cocoa or chocolate there is something special, a way of giving soul, body and life to those products, especially chocolate, whose consumption exceeds four million tons each year and produces profits of more than 80 billion Dollars.
Although “all chocolates look alike, there are different quality,” warns the expert and immediately specifies: “I produce what I would call specialty chocolate, which is made with quality cocoa called ‘specialty cocoa’.”
If anyone had a doubt about the passion that the ‘Stop in Paris’ guest has for quality chocolate, it is enough to say that from the age of two she began to develop that instinct, so much so that they called her ‘Chloé chocolate’: “I grew up in Latin America because my parents, who are European, met in Mexico, and it is true that at that time the best chocolate was the imported Lindt brand. I grew up with that. But because I had a very sharp nose and a passion for that product, I discovered, I tasted all the chocolates I found in my life, and then I discovered that there is enormous diversity.
Three quarters of the production of the precious seed – cocoa – now comes from West Africa. The overexploitation of the product associated with an explosion in global chocolate consumption has led specialists to warn of the risk of rarefaction of the cocoa seed due to the inappropriate way in which its production is exploited.
Faced with that, the author of the book ‘Le chocolat connaisseur’ points out that “the majority of consumers want a cheap product, and for that cheap product you need cheap cocoa, and that cheap cocoa is precisely what Africa produces, between the Ivory Coast and Ghana. The best cocoas in the world currently come from Latin America, Central America, and more and more of other continents such as the Asian continent, and little by little of Africa.”
Thanks to the movement Bean to bar, which was born a few years ago in the United States, a revolutionary transformation has been launched. “This movement, which has now become a fundamental trend in all countries of the world, including producing countries, created a demand for special cocoas, which are cocoas with better genetics, better fermentation and drying, because these factors represent close to 40 percent of the genetics. So there is a profound change in the cocoa-producing countries, new genetics are being planted to be able to supply this demand that is international,” says Chloé Doutré.
For ordinary mortals it is not easy to identify among hundreds of chocolate brands, and the sometimes prohibitive prices are obstacles to take into account. What elements should the consumer take into account to know that he is eating something of quality and not a sugar bomb? “Any human being is capable of making the experience with his body, without necessarily finding the words to describe it. expertize “You get it with many tastings, but the most important thing is to taste several products at the same time.”
“It takes any person not only comparison to discover the difference, but also a repeated encounter with those different products to go from surprise to excitement and pleasure. A different pleasure.” A delight.
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