Ethical chomping
Although the chocolate industryis
estimated to be worth US$50 billion
annually, and we Brits each chomp
through 8.4 kilos of the stuff a year,
the average cacao farmer in Cote
D’Ivoire or Ghana lives on less than
$1 a day. The Fairtrade Mark is a
certified scheme which ensures
sustainable prices for farmers and
which pays an additional premium to
be spent on business investment or
community projects. Aware that
top-quality chocolate can only be
made from top-quality beans, many
UK chocolate makers now go a step
further, forming close relationships
directly with the growers and paying
two or three times the market price
to the farmers for them to invest as
they see fit, though these measures
are unregulated. Some, such as Hotel
Chocolat and Rococo own their own
plantations, and Divine chocolate is
unique in that farmers (from a
Fairtrade-certified cooperative in
Ghana) own 44% of the company.1 &^2 The pretty village
in Bournville was built
by George Cadbury
forhisworkersatthe
nearby factory.(^3) Stack ’em up, ship ’em
out: chocolate boxes
leave the factory in 1930.
(^4) Before Mars even
thoughtoftheslogan...
a Bournville booklet
promoting its wares.
(^5) Truffles. Enough said
over Europe (England’s first opened in
London in 1657) but since it was expensive
and time-consuming to prepare, it
remained largely the preserve of the upper
classes. That all changed with the
industrial revolution.
Joseph Fry – a Quaker who saw cocoa as
a healthy alternative to alcohol – was the
first to spot the potential and installed one
of Watt’s new steam engines to grind the
beans at his Bristol cocoa works. Adopting
Dutch innovations on how to remove cocoa
butter from the beans and then recombine
it with the resultant paste, Fry & Sons was
also the world’s first company to launch
the solid chocolate bar in 1847.
When Prime Minister William
Gladstone then reduced the taxes on cocoa
beans in 1853, the race was truly on. Rival
firms Cadbury and Rowntree’s (founded as
manufacturers in 1824, in Birmingham,
and in 1862, in York, respectively) jostled to
compete. Cadbury took an early lead with
Dairy Milk (1905) and Fruit & Nut (1921)
but by the 1930s when a young Dahl was
chomping his way through the taster
boxes, it was anyone’s game. Dahl himself
hailed 1930 to 1937 ‘the seven glorious
years’, spawning as they did the Crunchie
and the Whole Nut bar (Cadbury), the
Mars Bar and Maltesers (made by the
recently launched British arm of US firm
Mars), Terry’s Chocolate Orange, and
Black Magic, Aero, KitKat and Smarties
(Rowntree’s), to name but a few.
Though the big brand names persist
to this day, mergers, buyouts and mass
production meant that, for a while,
some of the sparkle went out of British
chocolate. Not so anymore.
Driven by an interest in quality,
provenance and, above all, f lavour, the
British chocolate industry today is
booming with artisan and small-scale
makers producing Wonka-worthy
creations by the (Charlie) bucket-ful.
73
ESCAPE (^) | OUTING
PHOTOGRAPHY: ALAMY; REX FEATURES; STOCKFOOD; STOCKSY »
2345