In a first, a craft chocolate grown in India has won big at the world finals of the International Chocolate Awards this year
Sichuan pepper and orange peel
It was the British, who sowed the first cacao beans in South India—mainly Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. In the last decade, homegrown craft chocolatiers have led the conversation to retelling the bean-to-bar story—Mason and Co (2015) to Pascati (2015) and Soklet (2015).
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A fairly new entrant, Paul & Mike has been doing somehaha silent but head-turning work in Kochi. After studying the cacao farming practices in Latin America, Vikas Temani launched his craft chocolate brand (www.paulandmike.co) in 2019 with the backing of Synthite.
Fresh cacao bean
In its third year, it has managed to bag India’s first win—a silver in the World Finals at the International Chocolate Awards, which was founded in 2012 and is run by a group of independent international partners based in the UK, Italy and the USA.
The winning flavour is a vegan, 64 per cent dark Sichuan pepper and orange peel bar made with Muscovado sugar. A flavour originally created for the China market in 2019, it has done fairly well in India too, Temani tells us over a phone call from Kochi.
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Alongside the world finals winner, their Alphonso mango bagged a bronze at the APAC level. The first bar from the brand this writer tried was Jamun (it won a bronze at the same awards in 2019 in the Asia Pacific Category), with a unique combination of tropical Indian produce. “Everyone is doing a blueberry and cranberry, but we have a whole gamut of fruits and spices in India that remain unexplored,” says Temani.
The drying and fermentation process for cacao beans
Paul & Mike has its own cocoa farms in Kochi and Coimbatore, and Temani sources wet cacoa beans from Kerala and Andhra Pradesh too. “This is to control the drying and fermentation process, as it is what brings out the complex fruity and spicy notes.”
While the line includes Indian-inspired flavours like sitaphal, peanut chikki and organic jaggery, it also uses international ingredients. “We want to offer offbeat, novel offerings, with unique foreign ingredients—Italian Piedmont hazelnut and a Balkan rose. Indian chocolate lovers want a little bit of everything, from classic plain and fruit and nut to the exotic,” he adds. With the parent company owning an R&D set up, Temani has involved food technicians and PhD leadership to help curate the flavours.
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Apart from a store website, there isn’t much about Paul & Mike online, except a quote from the makers here and there. “We think there is still time for that [publicity]. We are fully focussed on creating the best chocolates.”
Their recent collaborations have been with craft beer brand Simba. The two created a pairing of chocolate with Simba beer. Here, they have used the dark stout with notes of espresso and cacao and blended it with dark caramel in their chocolate.
Alphonso mango
In the pipeline is a high-protein, low calorie lifestyle range for Keto dieters, drinking chocolate, snacking chocolate barks and super intense dark chocolates to give Lindt’s much-loved dense dark chocolate the takkar. “India is not a chocolate-expert country. We have been applying for the awards every year for a reality check, to get a sense of where we stand. We are learning to gauge what they want from India. They want to see a reflection of our country in the bar. A touch of local produce and culture. Taiwan, for that matter, has done it beautifully. It is not a chocolate-forward country, but they have been able to make a dent on the international chocolate map well. We’ll get there too.”
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