Bean-to-bar, coast to coast

Standing in front of the display walls at Montreal’s État de Choc, it’s easy to feel like a kid in a candy store. Then again, this self-described luxury chocolate shop is precisely that, and more.

A French wordplay evoking a ‘state of chocolate’, État de Choc’s owner Maud Gaudreau’s all-chocolate, all-the-time boutique is a unique showcase of bean-to-bar chocolates from across Canada and around the world. With the emphasis on chocolate makers – those who buy and transform cocoa beans, usually ethically sourced – Gaudreau’s own team of chocolatiers use local Québec- and Canadian-made chocolate couverture for their eponymous award-winning bars and other treats.

Gaudreau is onto something: according to the Interamerican Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture, Canadians consume over 160 bars of chocolate per year per person, making them the ninth largest consumers of chocolate in the world, one kilo more than their neighbours to the south.

_{État de Choc in Montreal. Photo by Myriam Baril-Tessier}

État de Choc puts the spotlight on Canada’s position as the eighth largest craft chocolate maker in the world, after the US, European countries and Ecuador – and ahead of Switzerland, surprisingly. The high-ceilinged storefront is a beacon of bean-to-bar chocolate education in this food-focused city. The sheer range of Canadian-made products stocked on the spacious shelves allows Gaudreau and her team to elucidate the characteristics of different origins. They offer tastings to aficionados and beginners alike, carving out a space for the shop as an important online and in-person market for Canadian makers and consumers.

“One of the biggest challenges for us starting out was precisely the education side,” notes Erica Gilmour of Almonte, Ontario’s award-winning Hummingbird Chocolate Maker. When she and her husband Drew started “playing with chocolate” in their suburban basement, they had no idea that 13 years later they’d have a 10,000-square-foot production facility, store and popular café on the outskirts of Ottawa.

The Gilmours worked in international aid from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe and always loved chocolate. Post-earthquake work in Haiti in 2010 introduced them to cacao farmers; the couple’s experiences around the globe inform their commitment to ethical cacao sourcing.

_{Tempering at État de Choc. Photo by Myriam Baril-Tessier}

“The quality of the bean and the transparency with how the farmers are being paid are the most important things for us,” Erica says. “To increase livelihoods for farmers is to create a sustainable market for them.” Hummingbird’s Dominican Republic 70% Hispaniola bar, one of several single-origin bars from the small Caribbean island, won the Golden Bean award from the Academy of Chocolate in 2016. That bar put them and other Canadian chocolate makers on the map and is still one of their best sellers – along with their salted caramels.

“The awards keep coming,” says Vince Garcia, one of four founders and co-owners of Vancouver’s Kasama Chocolate. In 2021, Kasama competed at the International Chocolate Awards for the Americas and was the most awarded company at North America - Americas level, including awards for innovation and special ingredients.

“We all grew up on the West Coast in British Columbia, and that inspires our flavours,” Garcia says. The Forest and Sea bar features rosemary and sea salt with Ecuadorean chocolate; the Spring Awakening bar is made with foraged spruce tips, and their seasonal Autumn Dream bar is made with Ugandan beans, BC cranberries and Ontario maple sugar. Ocean Mysteries, a 65% Ugandan bean ground with kelp and wakame is topped with phytoplankton salt from the temperate rainforest islands of Haida Gwaii off the northern British Columbia coast.

Kasama’s bars embody the connection between Canada and Garcia’s family’s roots in the Philippines: their winning Goat’s Milk bar is made with beans from Davao and milk from BC; their Isla de Tanduay bar blends Philippine cacao beans aged in oak casks from a Vancouver distiller, with Tanduay White Philippine Rum.

Toronto’s Soma Chocolatemaker is another award-winning company known across the country. David Castellan and Cynthia Leung opened their business 20 years ago in the city’s Distillery District and now have three locations, offering a range of bean-to-bar tablets, including their award-winning 70% Venezuelan Porcelana bars. Soma’s Old School Bars are the most intriguing looking – crumbly fingers of pure cacao with minimal sugar. Offered in Venezuelan Chuao milk and Madagascar dark chocolate, these better-than-a-brownie bars have captured their loyal customers’ imaginations and keep winning awards.

Soma has different groups of customers, Castellan explains. “Some of them really want a dark chocolate: we make an 88% for them. People who want the hardcore cocoa flavour might find 70% too sweet, even though it really isn’t. And then you have the people who just want a nice milk chocolate. For them our Dream Machine milk chocolate, made with Ontario milk, is really tasty.”

_{The Qantu team in Peru}

Montreal’s Qantu, Cacao et Chocolat, owned by Peruvian-born Elfi Maldonado and Maxime Simard, partners in life and business, has been building a strong reputation with its USDA Organic-certified, direct trade, heirloom cacao bars. Their first three bars won two gold medals (Gran Blanco and Morropón) and silver (La Mar Chuncho) at the Academy of Chocolate Awards in 2017, one year after they opened. The next year they won two Golden Bean awards from the Academy of Chocolate, for the floral-flavoured wild Chuncho and the cherry-plum noted Morropón. Their heirloom Chaska, redolent of fig and dates won in 2020, and they took Best Overall in the 2020-2021 International Chocolate Awards with their Oh la vache! 60% dark milk chocolate bar, made with Peruvian Morropón white cacao and Canadian milk. That bar, their website says, offers “10 minutes of happiness after each bite.”

The couple’s happiness comes from more than the deliciousness (and success) of their products. “We are cooperativista to the core,” Maldonado says. Qantu has worked with the same producers from the time they started their company over six years ago, buying three bags from the Salon du Chocolat in Lima in 2016. “We went on a buying trip with other producers afterwards, and the flavour was incredible from those Peruvian beans.”

The chocolate makers say competitions are good for sales. “If there are two bars, a customer will always buy the one with the award sticker on it,” Castellan says.

_{Tempering at Hummingbird}

Hummingbird’s Gilmour acknowledges the role competitions play. “We don’t create anything new for them, but we continue to compete. It reassures people that the quality they’re paying for is there,” she says. “It’s a great benchmark for us to see how we’re faring with our products against others.”

Successful competitions aside, the Canadian chocolate-making scene is remarkably collegial. Kasama means togetherness, friendship, camaraderie and collaboration in Tagalog, and Qantu is a symbol of unity and hospitality for Peruvians.

“We reach out to each other whenever we need help,” Soma’s Castellan says, recounting how makers from around the world would meet in Tokyo for a chocolate summit pre-pandemic. “Honestly, it’s a big party every time we get together,” he says. “It’s very non-competitive, even though in theory we’re competing online.”