CHOCOLAT MADAGASCAR | Single Origin Fine Dark Chocolate | 100% Cacao | 85 g

Product Information

To find out more on MIA​, listen to our podcast interview with Brett – or visit the company at ISM​, Hall 4.2, Stand J050 April 23-25 at the Koelnmesse.​ Our first production unit was set up in 2005 and development started with our first recipes, with the help of a French Maître Chocolatier.

The more recently established Chocolaterie Cinagra has been making chocolate at their Antananarivo based factory since 2006, also using single origin cacao grown on plantations within the Sambirano region. In 2009 their 63% cocoa based Tsar bar won first price at the Salon de Chocolat Paris in France. Since 2008, Cinagra produces chocolate for Madécasse - a US importer and brand, sold primarily in the US and Canada as well as Germany.Caramel and butterscotch flavours lead in the tasting, with pronounced lactic notes too. The creamy-caramel-butter notes lead and continue right through into the aftertaste. It's here the flavour is augmented slightly by notes of vanilla and toffee. Exclusive to Henley Bridge the range is now available in chocolate drop format to make it easier for bakers, pastry chefs and chocolatiers to use in their creations.

For the discerning consumer, the single origin or single estate or single terroir chocolate tasting journey is interesting, offering three-dimensional flavours​,” says Kelsall, “ that lingers on the tongue​.” Given the resurgence of cocoa's popularity, more chocolate brands are considering sustainable and ethical best practices. New efforts are under way, such as the Cocoa Accountability Map, Cocoa & Forests Initiative, and the International Accountability Framework . All of these organizations encourage the preservation of lemurs’ forest homes. Though Odilon's wife (who normally assists him) is at the coast, buying fish, the rest of his family are here: Alain Bruno, 18; Charlisa and Friejla, both 14; Andriamisy Francisco, 13; and Jucardo, six. Though they go to school, they help their parents at weekends, learning the business of cocoa preparation. 'I would like all my sons to be preparateurs,' Odilon says, 'because they can earn good money.' Dried and treated beans sell for three times as much as the fresh product - in Neil Kelsall's terms, a way of achieving 'added value' at the earliest possible stage. And there’s another advantage: Sustaining an ecosystem increases biodiversity, encouraging more animals, such as Madagascar’s endangered lemurs, to return to the land.

Where can you buy ethical vegan chocolate?

This chocolate has a very expressive cocoa aroma with subtle fruity-sweet tartness and pleasant flavor notes that evoke citrus and red berries. We combined it with the finest and rarest pepper, the Voatsiperifery from Madagascar, whose earthy and woody taste is completed by intense flowery aromas bringing freshness to the palate. awards:

There’s two variants of vegan chocolate available on the market – passively/accidentally vegan and certified vegan. The first is where companies develop recipes using no animal products. These are often produced in factories that handle animal products (most typically, milk). While the product will be branded ‘vegan’, small print on the rear of the bar usually explains it is produced in a facility that handles non-vegan ingredients. Certified vegan products are those that have been vetted by external auditors to ensure the product uses vegan ingredients and the production process minimises cross-contamination as far as practically possible. I suppose there’s still a small risk of cross-contamination on certified products but I would expect a far smaller chance of this occurring. Companies such as MIA (Made in Africa) and the multi-international award-winning Chocolat Madagascar are at the forefront of a new push to make the island’s chocolate production more sustainable. Some chocolate producers are therefore pushing the concept of single origin further. And it is this that offers the potential for even more of the value of the lucrative chocolate trade to be kept in countries such as Ivory Coast and Madagascar. What is single-origin chocolate? If you can't buy chocolate in Madagascar, various chocolate makers in other countries offer Madagascar cocoa based chocolate, either made from bean to bar or from pre-crushed cocoa exported from Madagascar. However, such brands are mostly available in specialised gourmet chocolate stores, usually at relatively high prices. What we want to do is build upon Fairtrade​.” He explains that Fairtrade ingredients such as cocoa is an abbreviated version of Fairtrade products - which is they choose single ingredients to certify within a product.

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All three bars come sealed inside a brightly coloured cardboard box. Each features a gold-foiled J.D. Gross logo and the cocoa origin information is similarly styled. Located in the Sambirano Valley, near Ambanja, in the North-West of Madagascar, Bertil Åkesson’s estate spreads over about 2000 ha and is divided into smaller plantations like this Ambolikapiky. Since 1920, these farms produce world-famous aromatic cocoa and spices (like this pink pepper) used by most of the top chefs and chocolate makers around the world. In this subtle chocolate, the fruity-sweet tartness of cocoa, its pleasant flavor notes that evoke citrus and red berries are enriched by the floral notes of our pink pepper. The Madagascan box is decorated in reds, whites, and greens, and depicts a graphic of a lemur together with an outline of the country. The Peru box features more reds and oranges, and includes a depiction of a llama. The Grenadian box is perhaps the brightest of them all in a happy cacophony of yellows, greens and reds, together with a graphic of a butterfly. The three bar boxes side-by-side Chocolat Madagascar is primarily a B2B company and started working with HB ingredients, based in Lewes, East Sussex in 2013, to help with exports of its couverture and bars to the UK and the rest of Europe. The country’s slash-and-burn approach to farming is evident in an endless stretch of treeless rice patties; some cacao parcels where more progressive growing practices haven’t been introduced contain small trees bearing little fruit.