The Tasting Drop Experiment
When I started Black Mountain Chocolate, I knew very little. I still have quite a bit to learn, but at that point, I was a true neophyte to the practice of making chocolate from the bean. What I did have though, was passion. A passion to learn more and that’s what I set out to do. Common advice that you will hear when starting a business is to portray yourself as the expert in the field, sort of fake it until you make it. I guess in a sense I did that to some extent, but chocolate is far more complex than I had ever imagined. Just given the fact that they are still discovering new flavor compounds to this day should have been my first clue, but I was a bit naive. Not so much that I set out on the path to hit the market with a fury though. I wanted to pace it out. It was difficult because at the time I started there were maybe a handful of chocolate makers in the country. It was a race to be the first at this or that. I got caught up in it to start, but slowed down as I felt there was no rush. I mean, we weren’t creating the next great techno-gizmo or anything. So it was then that I decided to base my first product on learning more. That being the Black Mountain Chocolate, Single-Origin, Dark Chocolate, Tasting Drops, (wow, that’s a mouthful). I wanted to learn three things. How the origin of the bean affected the flavor? How what I did affected the flavor? And, of course, what people liked? All that really counts is the latter of the three though. If you don’t like it, you won’t buy it; but to get to the third, I had to go through the first two.
So the Tasting Drops started with three different beans from three different countries. I did everything in the process the same so as not to confuse the results. I held many tastings and received tons of feedback on each one. I asked questions, listened, and watched as people tasted between the three. I compiled the data, mostly in my brain, and one thing stood out eventually. The chocolate that was just made, was always preferred. Well maybe not always, but it outweighed the other two greatly. At first, I was baffled because the fresh thing didn’t hit me right away. I would do a tasting one month, and one origin was preferred, the next, something different. Sure, everyone has different tastes, but there was on occasssion a repeat taster who would say “last time I liked this one, but now I like this one.” I had a hunch, tested it out, and it stuck. You may be asking yourself why one was fresher than the other? Well, to retain the integrity of the single-origin bean, I would produce one batch, clean everything and make the next. Sometimes it would be several weeks in between, or even longer.
So with that information at hand, I came to the conclusion that I wanted to provide the freshest chocolate available. To do that, I had to change my business completely. No longer could I put chocolate on the shelves of stores to sit for months on end, allowing it to diminish in flavor. I must make it fresh from the roasted cocoa bean and even sell it before I make it. The opportunity to be one of a very limited number of people to get the freshest chocolate on the planet is coming soon. Stay tuned…