Holiday Tour Day 24: The Next Batch and Amano

A river flows through it

From all of us, to all of you, we wish you all a blessed Christmas, Hanukkah, Eid al-Fitr, Kwanzaa, and all other year-end celebrations and traditions that your family honors.

I personally would also like to take a moment to send blessings to all people impacted by war and violence throughout the world right now. Because there are far too many of them, and everyone deserves joy in their lives.

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It is a beautiful thing when you meet a kindred spirit. Someone with a shared passion for handmade small batch chocolate, someone with an artistic eye, and someone dedicated to sharing her knowledge with the wider world.

I’m delighted to introduce you to Substack’s best kept secret in chocolate making.

TCM Holiday Tour Day 24 pairing:

THE NEXT BATCH and AMANO

The world of chocolate spans the globe, but it’s pretty intimate. When I bumped into Mackenzie Rivers and her publication The Next Batch here on Substack, I had no idea we’d have so much in common. She knows Clay Gordon, a good friend in the business and the person I’m corresponding with in our Letters series, and Nick Davis, the owner of One / One Cacao whom you met a few days ago. Fjåk, the Norwegian chocolate company we featured on Day 6, just happens to be a prior student of Mackenzie’s. We have both lived on sailboats, also in Los Angeles no less. Mackenzie’s words ring true for me too:

“And I lived on a sailboat once, docked outside of L.A. when I had the idea to go there to make something of myself”

~ Mackenzie Rivers

And yes, Mackenzie is a professional river guide—and writes a Substack about that, too. Coincidence that her real last name is Rivers? Nah.

We’ve met the Queen of Scoundrels; we’re about to meet the Queen of Inclusion Crafting.

I invited Mackenzie to join the Tour because a Holiday Tour of chocolates would not be complete without a real, genuine, craft chocolate maker who also writes.

Please welcome

Mackenzie Rivers

and

the Next Batch Bean to Bar School

.

The Cacao Muse: Mackenzie, this looks… stunning. Your chocolates are works of art. Do tell us all about what you do.

Mackenzie Rivers: The Next Batch shares the in-real-life lessons and insights of making bean to bar and becoming a craft chocolate maker. It’s helpful for anyone of any skill level whose aim is making skill-focused chocolate: the kind that fits in a tiny corner of a kitchen, or a small chocolatory, and doesn’t require large-scale factory-sized equipment. The Next Batch is also a resource for chocolate fans, good food lovers, the curious epicurean, anyone who wants to understand how slow batch craft chocolate is made, and the importance of the unique path it’s forging in food culture worldwide. You can check out the Substack or the website.

Birgitte: Wait, where do we get your chocolate??

Mackenzie: Oh, here. :)

Birgitte: Excellent. And weren’t you the first maker to do an oat milk chocolate?

Mackenzie: Yes… I created the chocolate world’s first oat milk chocolate and oat milk white chocolate in 2017 (I was formally credited by Gastro Obscura chocolate historian Sophia Rea for both creations). I also pioneered the inclusioncrafting trend in bean to bar.

Birgitte: Hats off Mackenzie! I imagine you have lots of chocolate fan groupies!

TCM: So, crazy question. Do you have a favorite chocolate? Besides your own of course.

Mackenzie: As a bean to bar teacher and mentor I don’t have a favorite brand, mainly because I am fortunate to be perched on the cutting edge viewpoint of where craft chocolate is heading, with intentionally small, flavor-focused, hands-on small batch makers making and taking chocolate in new directions. On the flip side of that, as a bean to bar maker and founder of a chocolate company, I am grateful and fortunate I can make exactly what I love, and crave: my favorite chocolate is what I drink every morning, a 68% plant-based dark milk malted chocolate made with cacao from Huila, Colombia. 

Birgitte: Mmm…. and this, you made this too?

Mackenzie: Yes. And this one:

Birgitte: These don’t feel humanly possible. They should be hanging in MOMA. My favorite is this last one, from a purely aesthetic perspective.

Speaking of art… there’s an artisan chocolate maker who uses the artwork of real artists on the covers of his chocolate bars. You’ll know his name Mackenzie… Art Pollard of Amano Chocolate. He was one of the first craft chocolate makers I met, about 8 years ago when I was researching my book The Jaguar and the Cacao Tree. Pardon the pun, but… he set the bar for me in terms of the levels of passion, dedication, and commitment an artisan maker should have.

So for me, as I went through the chocolate makers I know and love to decide on the right pairing for your feature, Amano stood out. And when I read Art's story about the cacao farmers in a small coastal village in Venezuela, there was no more question.

“This chocolate is like a river.”

~ Cacao farmer elder, Cuyagua, Venezuela

The bar I’ve chosen is the Citrus Mélange à Trois… it’s a delicious pun on a French phrase that shall go untranslated, lest we be banned forever from the Substackverse. Alas, I could not source a Japanese yuzu, so the tangerine and the grapefruit will have to do for the photoshoot:

Birgitte: As you can see, there are various elements of symmetry here—the vertical lines of cacao beans lining each side of the bar, and the mirrored placement of the fruit. I chose a velvet-black background to contrast against the rich, juicy cutaways of the tangerine and the grapefr—

Reader: Alright, enough art blah blah. Let’s tear into it already! I can’t take it anymore!

[Birgitte and Mackenzie exchange knowing glances. This is the effect of chocolate on humans.]

Chocolate: Citrus Mélange à Trois

Percentage: 63%

Origin: Ecuador, direct trade

Ingredients: Chocolate: Cocoa beans, pure cane sugar, cocoa butter, whole vanilla beans, yuzu, tangerine, grapefruit. Orange Pieces: apple puree, apple juice, orange juice, fiber, pectin, paprika.

Price: $9.95

Tasting Notes: Can you believe the bar looks this dark being just 63%! Those be some good beans. Layered among an expertly balanced trio of yuzu, tangerine, and grapefruit, orange pieces encased in juice just waiting to pop open.

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TCM: You are one of the few chocolate experts here on Substack. What stumps the experts?

Mackenzie: This is what has stumped me since the beginning of my craft chocolate career in 2014. It is beginning to change, but the pastry world has been slow to grasp the idea that “chocolate isn’t just chocolate,” in the way that beer isn’t just beer, or wine or cheese aren’t just “wine” or “cheese.”

I’ve had several renowned pastry chefs as students (including a James Beard pastry chef of the year) so I’ve experienced first-hand their delight in learning about the diversity of cacao flavor (they also are truly talented chocolate makers now). And, it’s something as a long-ago pastry chef myself, I’ve wondered about...being able to choose and pair a specific chocolate flavor profile with a dessert, or even a very basic baked good, is life, and pastry game changing. And a joy. A very, simple on its face, joy: salted rye chocolate chunk cookies? Reach for the batch of that 72% Vietnam Tien Giang you just made. I wish (and hope) more bakers and pastry folk begin to experience this. 

TCM: We really have to know. What would you change about the industry?

Mackenzie: Aside from the (very big and yes, more than troubling) continuing issues of ethics in the cacao trade, I’d like more clarity and truth, and guidelines, in advertising/marketing. Big (seriously big factories!) call their work small batch because it’s the trending jargon; same with calling machine-made chocolate “craft.” A former craft maker just built a new factory that takes the beans from sort to temper without a single hand touching a single bean—that’s not craft, that’s industrial chocolate. And on the other side of that, small, very tiny, makers call their one-melanger kitchen a “chocolate factory” to appear bigger!

Nearly everyone (yes, a few exceptions) says “ethically sourced” or “direct trade” or “fair trade” without having a clear understanding of those terms, much less actual transparency and proof.

Birgitte: Sigh, unfortunately true.

Mackenzie: Ceremonial chocolate is a whole new wild wild west of cacao marketing and labeling.

Birgitte: Sigh, even more true.

Mackenzie: If a consumer believes the marketing terms and makes a purchase based on those terms (and what they imply), they deserve to receive the product they believe they’ve chosen over other products. It seems simple, and the right thing to do. 

Birgitte: Sigh. You would think. We certainly have a big job to do here at The Cacao Muse, and we’re so glad to have met you Mackenzie.

Mackenzie: I appreciate you thinking of us for this.

You have now read twenty-four pairings of chocolates and writers. If that doesn’t make you want to be either a writer or a chocolate maker, or perhaps both, nothing will. But it’s all good—those of us who do write and who do make chocolate for a living, are all too happy to continue doing so, and sharing our craft with you.

You’ve got the easy job: read, subscribe, like, share, restack… tell all your friends and families! And eat plenty of high quality craft chocolate sourced directly from cacao farmers.

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COMING UP! DAY 25 of the TCM HOLIDAY TOUR

We’re still waiting on our featured writer for Day 25. Latest word is that he did get his Internet back, but he might not have time to submit the material for the feature.

Will he, or won’t he?

It’s the last day of the Tour. If he’s unable to come through, we’ll have an empty mold tray with no chocolate to pour into it. What’s a Cacao Muse to do?

~ Well, who is he?

~ A prize-winning environmental journalist, the author of the Dot Earth blog at The New York Times, and a wonderful human being.

~ You sure like to set the bar high.

~ Heh, nice pun.