Artisanal chocolate brands are galore this festive season. Whether the chocolates are raw, organic, vegan or exotic, the stories behind them are fascinating.
A LOVE for chocolate and lack of good options led Jane Mason to make her own organic and vegan chocolates when she shifted to Auroville from Australia to join her husband Fabien Mason. She had no intention of making a business out of it, but soon friends wanted to buy the chocolate she made. Then she started getting calls from store owners as far as Mumbai.
“It was a very natural progression. The most important thing is that people love what we do. That’s what drove us to expand the business and make our chocolate available to more people,” recalls Jane. Since then, Mason & Co has progressed from a home laboratory to an artisanal facility. Perhaps the first large-scale artisanal chocolate-maker in India and the first to produce a tree-to-bar product in the country, Mason & Co has been making organic and vegan chocolate for the past two years.
“Our biggest challenge was to convince customers of what makes us different. How is our chocolate different from the bar sitting next to it on the shelf or another maker’s chocolate bar?”
Jane says the majority of chocolate sold in India contains very little cocoa, lots of milk and sugar, and is full of chemicals and preservatives. Also, it almost always contains a product called ‘compound’ that is essentially vegetable fat used to replace cocoa butter. But the Masons believe in keeping cocoa as close to the natural form as possible, so customers can also avail of the health benefits of chocolate, and not just taste. “We add minimal ingredients and our chocolate is dark, which means no milk and less sugar. We use organic beans and sugar, and add no chemicals, preservatives or emulsifiers,” says Jane.
The beans are sourced from within India and the couple have a team of farmers who grow cocoa to their specifications. “The way we work makes our chocolate pretty different from other chocolatemakers’ products. In India, it’s a very different market. Most chocolate makers don’t have access to farmers. So they buy their beans from countries around the world, having access to very high-quality beans from an industry that is well developed. It’s a little bit different for us. A lot of chocolate-makers using Indian cocoa are using sub-standard cocoa to make chocolate, but we started at the grassroots level and got the quality from the farm, which has resulted in high-quality and high-end gourmet chocolate coming out of India,” Jane explains.
But it wasn’t easy. “Sourcing has probably been the biggest challenge because there is an established market for farmers to sell their cocoa in India. There are big chocolate-making companies that buy all the cocoa in India. So our biggest challenge was to find farmers who were willing to work with us to change the way they do things in order to have superior quality. Now, that’s a very simple conversation to have with somebody who doesn’t have access to the market. But when they already have a market for sale and are not short of income, it’s a very different situation. It was difficult for us initially to find farmers willing to work with us to produce quality we were happy with,” Jane recalls. But their perseverance paid off, and today, the Masons have farmers contacting them to supply cocoa.
The next challenge was sales. “Our biggest challenge was to convince customers of what makes us different. It’s very hard to get across to a customer when you just have a small packet of chocolate. How is our chocolate different from the bar sitting next to it on the shelf or another maker’s chocolate bar? That’s probably the hardest part for us—to bridge the gap between what we are doing and consumer appreciation and understanding for artisanal chocolate compared to mass-market chocolate. But it’s certainly changing and we have got a great response,” she says.
Price: R300 onwards for 70 gm bars
Availability: Gourmet stores, online
KUHU Kochar and Tejasvi Chandela both wanted to take up projects they were passionate about, something new and challenging that drove them. They found a common passion in chocolate, and started All Things. Not surprisingly, their chocolate signifies their philosophy — celebration of the simple joys of life, be it travel, childhood memories, favourite season or even music. “It’s an idea that brings together everything—our love for design and travel, and our excitement to experiment with beautiful handcrafted chocolate. The journey has been fairly exciting so far,” says Kochar.
If the philosophy is simple, the actual chocolate is not so. The duo insist on sourcing the best of everything, using premium cocoa at the core of each bar, married with personally handpicked ingredients. “We try to ensure that our chocolates are an experience for the consumer. From the
packaging to the flavours, everything is curated to invoke emotion. Handcrafted in small batches, we bring new and exciting flavours to the market regularly. They have no added flavouring or preservatives, which is hard to find,” says Kochar.
Their range includes exotic combinations, like the Summer bar with Belgian white chocolate and a centre of Alphonso mango compote. The Jaipur bar is appropriately wrapped in pink paper and has a rich combination of whiskey and dark chocolate. The Barcelona bar promises a little bit of
the city’s festive spirit that marries dark chocolate with flavours of sangria. One of their bars, Single, is a collaborative property where they work with musicians from across the country. Each bar tells a story about the artiste’s music through its design and flavour. Delhi-based singer-songwriter Prateek Kuhad is one such musician they have tied up with.
When she mentions packaging, Kochar isn’t exaggerating when she says it evokes emotions, as each bar is wrapped in beautifully-designed paper. “The packaging isn’t an extension of the product, it’s a part of it. The approach is simple: we start with a ‘why?’ Why we create multiple designs and follow a design process for each box is for more than just aesthetic reasons. We like to create work that touches people, whether it makes them smile, feel nostalgic, excited or even stirs a thought,” she adds. Currently supplying chocolate to 12 different stores across the country, they aspire to supply to almost thrice that number soon.
Price: R330-R385 for 100 gm bars
Availability: Online and stores in New Delhi, Ahmedabad & Jaipur
