January 2008
Marlon Brando Would Be Proud:
Missouri Breaks The Chocolate Mold
Amazing Chocolate Bars from Shawn Askinosie
Thinking about the capitals of the chocolate world my mind goes first to places like Paris, Brussels, and Turin. I turn from there to New World cities like New York, San Francisco, maybe Chicago. Springfield, Missouri? No offense to anyone who lives there but the likelihood of it appearing on mine or anyone else's list of hot chocolate towns would probably have been next to nil. 'Til now — you heard it hear first — Springfield will soon become a meaningful spot on the chocolate map of the world.
As a city, Springfield itself isn't news to me. I've actually been there to visit, but, for once, food wasn't the purpose of my trip. It actually could have been though — I didn't know it at the time, but Springfield happens to be the Cashew Chicken capital of the country. The dish was first served there at Tony Leong's Tea House in 1963. Truth is, though, that I flew down there to visit Jack Stack and the folks at Springfield Remanufacturing Co. (aka, "SRC"). Back in the early 80s — in fact, the exact year we opened the Deli — the company pioneered the development what's now known as Open Book financial management (more on this below). But now, all that's in the past, and it's taken a back seat in my mental "Why Think About Springfield?" ratings. Right now, when I think about Springfield, the only thing I'm thinking is Shawn Aksinosie's chocolate bars.
Shawn chocolates have been on the market for only a little over six months, and new here at Zingerman's on January 1, 2008. What's got me paying so much attention is that if the chocolate is as good as it is this soon after it's been released, that tells me it's pretty likely going to be all the better still a year, two and twenty more on down the road. Plus Shawn's doing all the things that we like to see a producer do — this chocolate is anything but the oft-offered, quick fix, bit of fancy food footwork to try to capitalize on the current food world craze. By contrast, it's a well-thought out, low on the glamour, high on attention to detail work that's yielding some very impressively fine results.
Stacked Deck?
Ironically, it's actually through the Open Book connection that I came upon Shawn's work. Jack Stack is the man who pioneered the Open Book management system we've adapted and have used for many years now at Zingerman's. If you aren't familiar with the approach (and only a tiny percentage of the business world is) Open Book is the system where an organization's entire staff participates in the financial workings of the business. People don't just passively see the numbers — they're actively involved in managing them, are responsible for results, etc. We've been using the system for over a decade and are big believers in it. If you're interested in more on the subject, you can read Great Game of Business, the book Jack co-wrote with Bo Burlingham (who more recently authored the excellent Small Giants; Companies that Choose to Great Instead of Big which which features Zingerman's. You can also email me at zingtrain@zingermans.com for an essay on the subject. Or better still, come to ZingTrain's 2-day "Fun, Flavorful Finance" seminar, where we teach the Open Book system as we've adapted it here. The next session is coming up Monday, March 17th and Tuesday, March 18th. I co-lead it so you'll be stuck with me for two days but I promise we'll have fun and learn a lot. And I can guarantee that the food will be better than at any finance seminar you'll attend anywhere else. In fact, I'll sweeten the deal by offering a free set of Shawn's two chocolate bars to anyone who reads this and registers for the seminar (734-930-1919).
Anyways, Jack Stack called me because he wanted to be more actively supportive of Shawn's work. He told me about Shawn's background as an attorney, about how Shawn's life long passion had been to make chocolate, how he'd retired from the legal profession and was just getting going with the chocolate. Jack liked all of that a lot. He told me Shawn was one of the nicest guys he knew. I have great respect and high trust for Jack's business sense, and the project sounded great to me so I was sort ofwondering why he was even calling. "So, what's the problem?" I asked. "Well," Jack said, "the thing is I love everything about the project, but I can't stand the chocolate. I think it tastes terrible."
Now I love Jack, but I think it's okay to say that he wouldn't be real high on my list of people I'd call to consult on chocolate quality. To his credit, he was calling me because, having grown up on Hershey bars, he wanted me to taste Shawn's bars and see what I thought. Always happy to help out a friend with a food question, I asked for samples. From what he'd told me, in truth, I didn't have a clue whether what I was going to get to taste was going to be terrible or terrific. Mostly I figured it was likely to fall somewhere in between. No offense, to Jack, Shawn or the Show-Me state but I've tasted a lot of chocolate over the years, and the vast majority of it is moderately mediocre at best. Plus, this was coming from Springfield, Missouri, right?
A few days later a small brown box appeared in my stack of stuff to go through. The samples had arrived — two chocolate bars, one made from Ecuadorian cacao, the other from someplace in Mexico that I'd never head of. The packaging was very nice; certainly a good sign, but in our world there's rarely much correlation between the way the outer wrappers look and the quality of what's inside 'em. Since the bars happened to arrive the day before our monthly new product tasting meeting, I put them out in the stack with about fifty other things and figured I'd get to taste the following day. I'm glad I didn't wait any longer than that. Granted they are being made in Springfield, Missouri, but damn if these weren't a couple of the most interesting and most flavorful chocolates I'd tasted in a long time. The Mexican bar was extremely good; the other one, from Ecuador, was head-shakingly excellent. Both were well worth our stocking and equally well worth you buying and eating.
Background on the Bars
Given that I first heard about him from Jack Stack, I wasn't surprised to find out that, like us, Shawn is a big believer in Open Book finance. Interestingly he's taken the approach through to what I thought was the fantastic idea of bonusing the cacao growers from whom he buys. It's a great idea and fantastic that he's putting it into practice from the get-go. But, without wanting to sound cynical, Askinosie is hardly the only chocolate company to profess positive business principles. What's more interesting to me is that Shawn's doing the right thing while also making some really special, really great tasting chocolates! There aren't that many people I know of who have combined good politics, good agriculture and really great finished chocolate all the way through from beans to bars. (Plantations from Ecuador, the Malagasy chocolates from Madagascar, and Claudio Corallo from the West African island of Sao Tome are three other small producers who come to mind.)
What makes Shawn's stuff so special? "Probably that we're able to control so much of the process," he told me straight off. "We manage everything from moisture content to the amount of fermentation." The quality of all chocolate starts in the soil, and Askinosie's is no exception. But most small chocolatiers start their work by buying already finished chocolate. It's called couverture in the trade and it's sold in large blocks, then melted and blended, reworked and refinished. Nothing at all wrong with that, but what Shawn's doing, by contrast, is actually going straight to the agricultural source, standing on the soil and buying cacao beans from the growers. The man has spent significant time in South and Central America in order to meet every single one of the three-dozen or so farmers from whom he's getting cacao in order to get to know them and what they do. "Because of that," he explained, "I'm able to literally evaluate the beans before we get them delivered. I direct the exact fermentation and drying specifications of my beans and this is the greatest influence of taste that there is."
"There are only a few places to effect taste," he went on. "The farmers have the first three — growing, fermentation and drying. Then we have the rest — roasting, conching and finishing. That's where we try to not mess up what the farmers have created." To focus his chocolate on the pure flavor of the cacao, Shawn decided not to use any of the lecithin or vanilla that are commonly used in most commercial chocolates. He does add a bit of cocoa butter which, quite remarkably, he makes himself in Missouri. It's almost unheard of in a production this small. Only a handful of chocolate producers — all much bigger than Askinosie — are doing it. I'm glad he is — makes a small but very significant difference in the flavor and quality of the chocolate.
Although I'm sure there'll be more offerings down the road, right now Shawn's showing a pair of great chocolate bars. The first is a 75% dark chocolate made with cacao from Soconusco in southern Mexico. While today it's just a tiny town on the country's Pacific Coast, six or seven centuries ago Soconuso was to cacao what Bordeaux is to grapes; in fact, the Aztecs took over the region simply because the cacao beans that came from there were so good. The area long ago fell off the radar of most everyone in the food world, but now, thanks to Shawn's work, we all get to taste the fruit of the labor of Soconusco's farmers — this is the first time this cacao has been used to make chocolate outside of Mexico in over 100 years! Through Shawn's educational efforts the Soconuso growers have begun to ferment their cacao, something that wasn't done in the old days but is one of the keys to making great chocolate from any cacao today.
The more I eat this chocolate the more I like it. It doesn't have that creaminess on the tongue that gets one's attention really quickly in that smooth European-style. But that's a lot of what I like about it. It's not overly refined, not too fancy, just really well-made and really flavorful. Lots of good, long lingering low notes with a very wide flavor that spreads out across your mouth side to side like the sun coming over the horizon in the morning. It's definitely not too sweet at all, which I like a lot. I like the energy of it the not overly-finessed feel it has in the mouth. Little bits of flavor keep coming out long after I've finished it, low and centered and very pleasant.
That's the good news. Which is followed by really great news. As high as the Soconusco bar scores on my taste tests, I think the second bar Shawn makes is even better. It's got a cacao content of 70%, so it's slightly less dark than the Mexican bar. The cacao it's made from comes from the tiny, centuries-old Ecuadorian village of San Jose Del Tambo, in the foothills of the Andes Mountains. I've yet to visit in person, but Shawn shared that, "At Del Tambo, the hills rise sharply until the tops are obscured by low-hanging clouds. The Rio de San Miguela, a fast-flowing river, along with just the right climate provides the land for some of the best cocoa in the world." Note though that it's not just the romance of the setting or the quality of soil that make the beans special. The beans it's made from are primarily the very-well-known-in-high-end-chocolate-circles, but almost unheard of anywhere else, Ariba varietal, known for their complexity of flavor.
The chocolate bar itself is really good — I'm impressed anew each time I taste it. Very well-balanced, complex with a really nice, very lively finish. It's creamy on the tongue without being over-the-top. It starts with a little bit of high note, but then gets really wide and long; a touch tart but not too tart; a bit of a flavor that reminds me of a big, dryish red wine. Tasting it makes me laugh now when I think about Jack Stack not liking it. If this is what chocolate from Missouri is all about, then Missouri is definitely breaking the mold! Seriously, this is one of the best new chocolate bars I've tried in ages.
Packaging Post Script
While it's not edible, take a minute to appreciate all the work Shawn's done on the packaging. It's pretty cool looking, very informative and environmentally sound too. "I'm probably obsessive-compulsive," he chuckled. "I'm not medicated for it although I probably should be. But I put a lot of time into coming up with the right package. I'm kind of a tactile person so I wanted a particular style of bag. It took a long time to source that waxed paper bag." The inner materials are made from "nature flex," an environmentally sound, wood-based cellophane. Inside each wrap is a small folded map that shows where the chocolates are from. "I've caught a little bit of guff for it but I want people to know what we're doing." And the finishing touch — the string used to tie the wrapper shut comes from the bags of beans that are shipped up from South and Central America.
And as I said, the flavor of both of these bars is pretty special — personally I'd get one of each, taste and compare and send Shawn a note at askinosie.com to let him know that all his efforts are making a difference! And don't forget my offer on coming to ZingTrain's "Fun, Flavorful, Finance" seminar — a bar of each of the above if you mention this essay when you sign up!
