today the real talk about the most are on mantic day of the year st valentine's day and of course some think that goes with it perfectly is  want to tell you a little bit abo and the problem was he married soldiers retransfer been so the roman emperor decided to have him executed and threw him in  a letter saying i am your valentine and and she she planted a wide the rose bush over his and there legend has it also have to understand sent well in pens the is not just a letter but it also has or should have romantic music maybe flowers maybe some jewelry but mainly chocolate chocolate chocolate i think that's the most important for me anyway now carrie that was so interesting hearing about the history of valentine's day i'm not sure a lot of people know that i know most people do think i have chocolate advair on tines day it's probably one of the most important things of the year in terms of connecting chocolate to a specific holiday although we do tend to each auckland during a lot of holidays kid yeah right isn't it funny how it's kind of snuck into almost every other holiday at the same time not that that's a bad thing at all but so yeah so i do with my company cocoa bean town we do chocolate tours and tasting events and that's how we got to know each other since it was a very good chocolate and bring greater awareness to all the wonderful types of chocolate different chocolate and backgrounds and like he said how it's grown and what not so i brought a lot of things to look at today is yes and to taste you but we have some things that are kind of telling us the origins of chocolate which i think a lot of people are curious about but they don't exactly know and this is also part of what we try to talk about a little on all of our tours in classes and that is the cocoa bean where it all comes from part of where our name comes from the name of the company cocoa bean town is kind of a play off of you know everyone talks about boston and being in town but we like to think of it as specifically cocoa bean because chocolate and boston actually has a long history to it the very st chocolate factory in all of north america was here in boston and learned how absurd it was baker's chocolate factory yeah for sure so if we talk about where that where the beans come from and where you need to  source the beans from in order to make chocolate it starts actually very clear this is an actual cocoa pod or cookout pod if you want to be very technical about it and you might hear it there are still some beans kind of rattling around inside it the pod has been harvested off the tree and there's a little stem you can see right here that has a very clean cut on it and that's because when these are harvest they actually have to use giant knives machetes to cut them off the trunk of the tree which is unusual because you think of a fruit like an apple or an orange growing off the branches of the tree the po actually grow up and down the trunk of the tree so it's really unusual but when these are hand harvested people we don't have machines or robots that can do the harvesting so they'll cut the  the trunk and it's really important that it's harvested in the particular manner because if the tree gets nicked or cut by the the knife at all it actually goes into shock and will stop producing pods and yeah i mean these are giant knives you have to be very careful and know how to handle them and what you're doing so they get harvested and chopped down and they actually don't spend a lot of time in the pod after that because the pod we don't use for anything there's nothing that we can make out of it really except maybe mulch so they will cut open the pod and there's all kind of a pulpy spongy white substance that surrounds the beans but otherwise when you cut them open and this is the pod that's been dried and hollowed out and i have actually beings in here that are these are actual beings they could be roasted and made into chocolate we just use it for demonstration purposes but they they look kind of like all men's bit some of them are very similar in size to it you could chew on these but they wouldn't be very pleasant probably a bit yeah have you ever had wrong of any kind they're very people are often surprised if we do tastings where we let people sample them because there's not sweet at all and so people think oh gosh chocolate is sweet wire is the thing that you add things right you have to add lots of sugar and other elements too you know we had caramels and fruit fillings and creams that add sweetness but the bean itself has no natural sweetness whatsoever and it has a lot of kind of nutty sometimes even kind of coffee ask notes to it and maybe also share similar similarities in terms of flavor profiles and origins but the basic idea of understanding where cocoa grows is that there's actually a cocoa belt that is twenty degrees north of the equator to twenty degrees south so and all around the world so home to anywhere within those parameters is where it will grow so when i ask folks you know where do you think cocoa grows usually the st am sorry here is south america which is there's there's areas of south america and central america where grows but it also includes parts of africa it also  includes places like vietnam and madagascar are so those sorts of origins people don't necessarily think of right away that's again part of what we try to do when we're you know showing people different types of john they they do the origins of chocolate of the cow beings have a lot to do with flavor particularly with one of the things that has become popular lately in the chocolate world and that is the concept of a single origin chocolate bar and i know we have a lot of coffee drinkers in the boston area so people are probably familiar with single origin coffees and understand that single origin coffees have different flavor notes depending on where it comes from and chocolate can absolutely be the same way you can have anywhere from fruity notes to salty you know it's like a lot of caribbean islands chocolate single origin chocolate has salt notes because of all the salt water madagascar chocolate will have the nilla notes because they grow a lot of familiar there the south american countries that grow a lot of coffee like then israel and colombia has have a lot of coffee notes to it so all these things were things that decades ago big wigs chocolate makers candy makers knew that this was a possibility that they could make products that maintains these single origin flavors and nuances the kind of made the decision for all of us that you know what i don't think people are going to appreciate that so we're just going to take beans from all over and put them all in one batch and then everything will get muddled out and it will be one or two notes that will hit a very you know common denominator and i think that was fine for many years but maybe fifteen years ago or even a little bit longer people started realizing small batch chocolate makers and chocolate ears decided you know what we might not get the international you know commercial success of a big company like mars or hershey's but we can answer access to education and resources and understanding where their food comes from and being able to appreciate that so this is very interesting i must say yeah  cocoa producing area so when i tell them that you know your average chocolate bar you hold in your hand and you don't necessarily have a label if you had to place a bet on it where it came from it probably would be one of those areas they have very poor comfort is yes yeah and that's another part of you know maybe that's cheaper for them to put right and there's  yeah there's a lot of ethical issues and with our classes and educational events and things we totally run the gamut from things that are just about fun with chocolate and tasting and learning and then other times it's we take kind of an academic approach and we've done talks on the politics of chocolate and the idea of engaged ethics in the chocolate business and what that means when it comes to things like women owned cooperative which is a big issue good yeah there's i mean there's so many rd world countries that are in that cocoa belts that it is an issue that very few women are allowed to own businesses and yeah right and  something that you know we can speak to about the importance of women being allowed to do that and i think also issues related to fair wages and even child slave labor and that's that's a major concern there are you know there's documentation that in those areas like like ana and ivory coast that some of the folks who are harvesting these these pods the people that are actually responsible for the most tedious part of the labor they get paid less than a day than what it cost to buy a chocolate bar in their area of the world and leave it i mean that's it's heartbreaking to think that you know that that people that are helping us to have something that makes us happy and is so delicious that are not being treated fairly so there's been a big movement along with the greater awareness of origins and the context of chocolate that people are paying more attention to things like the fair trade and direct trade labeling and other engaged ethics programs ots has some sort of similar to fair trade certification but there's also an importance and just understanding who you're buying from and understanding that sometimes very small chocolate makers and chocolate shares can't necessarily afford because it does cost money to pay for those certifications and sometimes small businesses are doing all the right things they just don't have the budget in order to get those sort of labeling that go would go on their packaging so it's not necessarily the only standard to look for those sorts of markings on your packaging but to just you know understand were who you're buying from and where they're doing their sourcing and have those talks or read those websites and and educate yourself and look for that information and we certainly try to help people with that there is an indian guy who funds women's businesses and wonder if that's wonderful to see that we actually have with this sort of i do like to refer to it as a run a stance of chocolate it's not that chocolate ever disappeared and it never will hopefully but the burgeoning crafts chocolate industry the advent of these small batch chocolates here that are doing really innovative things there are a lot of women that are really taking the lead on all different sort aspects of chocolate we have lots of great ones in the area harvard has a program with that's led by a woman who is very well known yes she does a lot a certificate program at harvard we have women around the country that are winning awards at the international chocolate awards and doing all these really amazing things and a lot of them are looking at things from both angles they're looking at the sourcing and making sure that the farmers they're working with are getting paid fairly the workers are paid fairly and they're using environmentally sustainable practices to doing good things for the world but then on the other hand they're turning around and making really fine quality really interesting yummy delicious indulgent chocolate led that yeah that makes mouthwatering near your level and then yeah and it does all these wonderful things just sit bring individual happiness to people so it's really it's a really valuable thing in both directions and i think it's a really powerful thing to like is that i'm glad to hear it because i was sort of a pi yeah you are but anyway till i think there's nothing as wonderful as chill that's my mind to you and to you for sure i've told you how i was born a national chocolate chip just had to pick the right day and that was the day for me so i was born with chocolate on my mind as my mom likes to say it's not a bad thing to be to have on your mind no no i don't i don't think so either i don't know why i love chocolate but ted you it's it is just a bowl to me it's good for you and there's a lot of reasons all different methods of chocolate making and chocolate processing and we're lucky we have a lot of really interesting businesses and chocolate makers and companies in the area and i brought some to share today factory tours and you can see how well i only need to talk chocolate diff well they actually do a stone ground math so rather then most even if it's not imported from europe if it's made in america it still made a lot of times according to european traditions and that thing yeah and that means it goes through a process called conscious and that's a funny word that sound you hear conch like conch shell and the machine resembles the shape of that shell and it was a process developed by rudolph lentz of chocolate which everyone's pretty familiar with swiss yes exactly which they their chocolate very well the average swiss person eats twenty six pounds of chocolate a year so we're probably a little swiss and didn't realize it but the toss a perspective on yeah i mean it's literally when you go to the factory you would see beans like this getting poured into a machine and big wheel like a wheel like stones that are just grinding them so they're not processed as long as the chocolate that was being const would but that means that there are more again more true to the being and people are always really surprised to hear that most of the bars have th four ingredients tops and they're very very straightforward and certified you know because they are only dark chocolate is g m o free and direct trade so they're also good for people that might have particular you know dietary restrictions or food allergies and whatnot to so i know that's when your favorites you had it for the st time on the look and then you yeah it was i absolutely love it  of i brought some chocolates for us to try from some local chocolate makers and chocolate ears we have a few different selections so lots of different things to try and up you what you're particularly interested in but i just want to speak a little bit about who we're featuring the st is viveur chocolates who are based out of the boston area it's a husband and wife team  that originally works in fashion which i think is really cool and you can kind of see that on their packaging it's really beautifully and elegantly designed it their logo in particular is really pretty it has kind of a  cosmopolitan type woman sitting at a cafe table with her little dog and that's inspired by the husband wife has a dog named truffles which is so of course chocolate inspired but they do really cool inclusion bars inclusion bars are when you have a chocolate bar that has something added to it that something other than milk or sugar or dairy air or whatever it might be so in this case we have there's an english garden bar which is my favorite they have a c n n bar there's peanut butter and pretzel curry cashew all these different amazing player and even more than what we have on display today and size so we have one of their bars to try  also have some selections from a place called fics chocolates and that's a woman chocolates here who was a train pastry chef and worked in area restaurants in boston for years creating amazing cakes and cookies and all sorts of really elegant desserts and started taking some of those inspirations and bringing them into the chocolate world and creating these sort of chocolate bars that are much more sophisticated than your sneakers or milky way they use things like baking or cornflakes or different sorts of and sea salts and things like that to make really yummy indulgent snack foods and then we also have a chocolate here that just opened a shop in came a new shop in cambridge and here on village area and they're in award winning chocolates here also woman owns and operated and they do amazing bon bon and different types of peanut butter cups and barks and we have a few different pieces of theirs to try and also you can see all of their different options they have for packaging they can do beautiful hand selected gift boxes and he time of year obviously it makes a great valentine's gift but they also have things available throughout the year for corporate gifting and just you know anniversaries birthdays tuesdays you know there's really no bad day so good every day oh it's beautiful yeah so that is one of the bon bons from you think that no you can eat the whole thing and as you eat i'm going to explain a little bit what that is  so that's a common russian actually people see chocolates that are made this way and they ask is that a sticker that i have to take off but you were able to eat it right just fine and in the actually what you call a cocoa butter transfer  so it's just the cocoa butter that they've made into a and yes and printed on that so that's a passion fruit caramel that you're enjoying and the design yes it's just an edible in that karma line the peanuts really and then grind them themselves and do a layered peanut butter cop that has both milk and dark chocolate and a little flair to sell on time yes yes so really really beautiful you want to try some more well which one how about the english garden bar if you don't want thank you because to be ending with this delicious stuff that's so that's my favorite bar that they do it fever and it has all of these flavors than it which people don't expect in chocolate and it's a about a sixty five percent dark so it's a kind of in the semi sweet range which is very nice  different yes all very different right but could in in their own way