Craftsmen of chocolate

“When I moved here there wasn’t any chocolate I could eat. All the bars were non-organic, full vegetable fats, sugar, and milk, and with only a minimum of cacao,” says Jane Mason, who joined Auroville four years ago. Jane hails from Australia but spent a couple of years in Indonesian Bali working as a Raw Food Chef with raw chocolate. “Indonesian chocolate is of a very high quality, and I began wondering about India.” Together with her husband Fabien Bontemps, who came to Auroville from France when he was 11 years old, she started researching chocolate. They found that India is one of the larger cacao growers in the world, not as a main commercial crop but as an intercrop in rubber or coconut plantations to optimize land utilisation. Pesticides are used a lot. “Frankly, the quality is terrible,” says Fabien. “But that doesn’t matter much to the big players in this industry, because the type of chocolate they make doesn’t require high quality cacao.”

They started buying small amounts of beans and making chocolate at home, experimenting with different beans to assess flavour and quality. The research gradually turned into an aspiration: to commercially make high quality chocolate, preferably using organically-grown beans, organic sugar and without chemicals, preservatives or emulsifiers. In 2012, the hobby turned serious and the Auroville business Mason & Co – Craftsmen of Chocolate was born. “We first thought of calling it ‘The Auroville Chocolate Company’ but this name was not appreciated by some,” says Jane. “Then a friend, who is a marketing manager and graphic designer, proposed Mason & Co, a bit of an old-fashioned name, but one, she felt, that inspires confidence in quality.”

Finding organic farmers

How does one find organic cacao farmers? “We spent a lot of time on the road asking around,” says Jane, “and the search slowly paid off. If a farmer has an IMO or India Organic certification, that’s a clue. But we also found farmers for whom the cost of organic certification is too expensive but who also cultivate beans without the use of pesticides, or only with a minimal use. We found a number of young farmers who are open to experiment and are willing to sell to us. But we have been very careful to not just walk in and behave as if we know better than them. One farmer was finally ready to deal with us after four visits. Only then can we advise them on better harvesting and fermentation techniques.”

“The difficulty is that the farmers already sell all their produce, even the mouldy and unfermented or half-fermented beans,” says Fabien. “In India, the big companies buy everything they can. They have collection stations or visit the famers every week to pick up what they’ve produced. So only truly motivated farmers are willing to go the extra mile and produce a better bean. From our side, we offer to pay more, even purchase their entire crop and advise on how to organically fight plant diseases and do proper fermentation. The organic farmers take this opportunity. They see us not only as a better source of income, but also as people who share pride in their products.”

Proper fermentation, explains Jane, is one of the main conditions for developing a good flavour. “After harvesting, the cocoa pods are broken open. The beans inside are surrounded by a white gooey pulp that starts fermenting as soon as the pod is opened. The farmers put the pulp and beans in fermentation boxes that are covered with leaves, and turn the beans every day or so for proper oxidation. From two to eight days, the pulp breaks down, liquefies and drains away. Chemical reactions cause the flavour and colour of the beans to develop. After fermentation, the beans are usually laid out in the open and sun-dried. We are working on improving the post-harvesting techniques (harvest, fermentation, drying) of the farmers with a focus of better flavour development and quality control.”

Yet, even then you never know what quality you’ll get,” says Fabien. “Like coffee, wine and tea, there are many cacao species. But we cannot go to the farmers and select the bean variety we like. Unlike cacao growers in neighbouring countries like Indonesia and Malaysia, the farmers in India are often unaware of the cacao variety they are cultivating and do not know the flavour of their beans. The ten varieties of Indian cacao, originally imported by Cadbury, were specially chosen for their disease-resistance and high yield. Over the years much cross-breeding has taken place. The strategy has always been to have Indian farmers grow as much as possible, not to have them grow fine-flavoured cacao.”

“No flavour-profiling has ever been done of these ten varieties,” adds Jane. “This is one of the things we have started working on with the Agricultural University of Kerala. If this is successful, then we can say ‘this is the type of bean we prefer’ and encourage farmers to start growing this variety. But that is still a long way ahead.”

The source of the cacao

Today, Mason & Co buys cacao from farmers in Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Incoming consignments are checked for quality – “we cut-test the beans to have an idea of the percentage of mould and fermented and unfermented beans,” says Fabien – and then hand-sorted. The good beans are roasted, which develops their particular flavour. “After fermentation, this is the second most important factor to develop the brown chocolate notes,” says Jane. “Depending on how you roast, you can have hundreds of different flavours. We spend a lot of time testing different roasting techniques for different beans from different farms. Each technique develops a different flavour.” Mason & Co also works with additives, such as organic orange essence and ginger, which they mostly make themselves. Chocolate made from beans produced by farmers who do not have organic certification are marketed as ‘natural’, while the label ‘organic’ is reserved for chocolate made from beans produced by famers who have an organic certificate.

Experimentation is not restricted to Indian-sourced beans, but includes foreign chocolate varieties. “We sometimes get chocolate beans from abroad and these are the basis for our Limited Edition flavours,” says Jane. An example is the Peru Maranon Limited Edition, made from the rarest cacao beans in the world, of which they managed to source a very small amount. “These 80% white beans are known as Pure Nacional and they produce one of the best chocolates I have ever tasted…almost no bitterness whatsoever with beautiful caramel and nutty notes,” says Jane. Chocolate connoisseurs are advised to follow the company’s Facebook page to get hold of these special treats.

A waiting list ...

For Mason & Co doesn’t advertise. “There’s a website [http://www.masonchocolate.com], a Facebook page and we blog,” says Jane, “but that’s as far as we want to go.” There is no need. Prospective buyers keep knocking on the door and there is a waiting list of over 200 clients. “The demand, not only from within India but also from abroad, is outstripping our supply possibilities. We sell in large Indian cities and through Amazon India. Even supermarkets in Australia, France and the UK have contacted us,” says Fabien. “But we have a challenge shipping our products. As we produce 100% organic chocolate with a high cacao content and no vegetable oils, our products have to be shipped in temperature-controlled ways. We are probably the only chocolate company in India which ships in this way.”

Mason & Co has the potential to become one of the largest Auroville units in terms of turnover. Shortage of funds, however, has halted expansion. “We’ve put in every cent we had and have exhausted both our personal resources and the goodwill of our families who have given us loans,” says Jane. “Auroville hasn’t come forth with offers of investment,” adds Fabien, “and in order to grow we need a lot of funds. But we are weary of taking loans. If Auroville wants to benefit from its business activity, it has to invest in its commercial units.”

For the time being, Mason & Co will continue as a small artisanal factory with their workforce of five people who are considered ‘extended family’. “We are not yet ready to exchange that for an industrial set-up,” says Jane. But what about competition? She laughs. “Since we started, four other companies have started on the same lines. One of them is organic. But even if there were fifty companies taking-off tomorrow, we would still not be able to produce enough to meet the demand.”

‘Mindful choices, joyful eating, blissful being’ is the motto of Mason & Co. Their chocolates are certainly adding joy and bliss to a large number of ‘mindful’ Aurovilians.