Rare Chocolate Comes to Grand Rapids
Terrero Blanco Chocolate Bar
Mokaya is known for incredibly beautiful chocolates that fuse art and science to make top-tier chocolate available to West Michigan. Charles “Smitty” Golczynski, the owner of Mokaya, releases an exclusive chocolate bar that literally goes straight to the source.
Mokaya has partnered up with Efren Elvir Maradiaga of Atúcun to make chocolate called ‘Tree-to-Bar’. The trees are located in Honduras, an ancestral home of cacao that dates back to the Mayan civilization and before. This process allows for artisanal handcraft to be executed at every step. “When I bite into it, I can taste things that I can't taste in other chocolates. “It just has wonderful earthy mushroom tones, and you know you can taste the canopy, forest feels to it.”, Smitty remarks.
Chocolate is a product of the cacao tree which sprouts orchid flowers from its trunk and creates colorful cacao pods. The pods are harvested by hand and the cacao beans are removed from the interior. When Maradiaga found the crop Jaime Gabriel Canales Domínguez had produced on his land, he curated the best harvest. Atucún specialty is in the critical next step of the process of creating chocolate– which is fermentation. The beans must sit and ferment for specific periods of time to get the right flavor profile for the end product. After the fermentation, the beans are dried and roasted. The shells are winnowed off and the beans get ground into a fine paste and melange for days with cane sugar.
Mokaya was able to try this product from several producers and decide on the Terrero Blanco as the best choice for this bar. The chocolate he received goes through special tempering and refinement to make the crystal structure of the cacao butter stay in a specific state that allows for a shiny and crisp bar that doesn’t melt onto your fingers.
Like fine art, a custom mold was created to form the chocolate bar. When the bars have cooled they are artfully painted with golden cacao butter dust. This artful completion of the product gives credit to the many steps that go into creating truly great chocolate. The light shines and bounces off the mold's rhythmic geometric shapes, allowing the eyes to eat first. “We’ve spent our time at Mokaya doing a lot of education around chocolate. I hope we can communicate how special this is to bring to the public. Artisanal hands are creating great chocolate at every step from tree to bar.”
Where: Mokaya artisan chocolate & confections
638 Wealthy SE
Grand Rapids, MI 49503
