Setting the bar high

Nitin Chordia to launch world’s first zero-waste and sustainable chocolate brand

94-Nitin-Chordia Sweet notes: Nitin Chordia at Kokoatrait in Chennai.

They say chocolate is happiness that you can eat. That would make Chennai’s L. Nitin Chordia, India’s first certified chocolate taster, the happiest man in the country. Imagine making and tasting chocolate for a living. The aroma, the colour, the flavour, the texture and the musical snap when you break a bar are definitely a treat to one’s senses.

Life was not the same for Chordia after he tasted the sample chocolate bars by Amedei, an Italian artisan chocolate manufacturing company, in 2007, while working as a retail business consultant. He was told that the bars were plain chocolate, without any other ingredient, but he could taste traces of fruit. When he called up the company, they told him that the flavour notes were coming from the cocoa beans. Curiosity piqued, he started learning more about chocolate making.

From finding out that idli grinders are used to crush the cocoa beans at Brussels, the chocolate capital of the world, to joining the Level 1 chocolate tasters’ accreditation programme at the International Institute of Cacao and Chocolate Tasting (IICCT) in the UK, the journey has been nothing less than an adventure. “It felt amazing to know that our humble idli grinders are used to make some of the award-winning luxury chocolates,” he says.

This adventure also led to the birth of Kocoatrait—his company that makes premium bean to bar chocolate. “India does not have a lot of access to the right premium chocolate and I spotted an opportunity in the chocolate value chain,” says Chordia. Along with making chocolate, he helms the Level 1 chocolate tasters’ certification programme in Chennai, London, and Amsterdam. He also runs Cocoashala, a training institute for chocolate enthusiasts in Chennai. “Apart from the theory classes, I take students on field trips to farms in Chennai and Kerala from where we procure our cocoa beans,” he says.

According to Chordia, tasting is all about being patient. “When you taste the chocolate, place it on your tongue, against the top portion of the mouth. Do not chew, let it melt slowly,” he says. He adds that one can get all the flavours of the chocolate when it is tasted at room temperature. “The flavour compounds in chocolate are complex and varied. Although you do not necessarily have to be a teetotaler to be a taster, it is better to abstain from alcohol or smoking a day before tasting,” he says.

Along with his wife Poonam, also a certified chocolate taster, Chordia is about to launch the world’s first zero-waste and sustainable bean to bar chocolate brand. The packaging material is a fabric made of reclaimed cotton and cocoa husk and it can be fully reused. The inside of the wrapper has mandala art templates, greetings, emergency contact lists and habit trackers. Even when it comes to machinery, they have developed their own designs which are energy efficient and sustainable. The bars are made from organic cocoa beans from India and traditional non-refined organic khandsari (muscovado) sugar. Looks like chocolate is more than just a sweet treat now!

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