NANTUCKET FARAWAY CHOCOLATE
A chef’s chocolate.
Made by hand on Nantucket.
Private and corporate gifting, shipped nationwide.
My first memory of chocolate is Nucita, squeezed from a little tube in Ciudad Alianza, Venezuela, where I lived as a boy. Years later, after two decades in the kitchens of Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Joël Robuchon, the world came to a standstill in 2020, and curiosity led me back to cacao.
Today I make every bar by hand, from the bean, at our Chocolate Lab on Nantucket. When I can find Venezuelan cacao, it goes into our bars. One day soon I’ll buy it from the farms myself.
Andre Marrero,
Founder & Chocolate Maker
The Craft of Chocolate
STEP 1:
Harvesting
Cacao grows within 20 degrees north or south of the equator. Cacao trees require high humidity, fertile soils, with abundant rainfall and warm temperatures.
STEP 2:
Fermenting
Through a meticulous process, the beans are carefully fermented and dried for over a week in order to bring out the unique flavors and aromas of the beans. This process is essential to producing high-quality chocolate with a richness of flavor unique to each origin.
STEP 3:
Drying
Proper drying of the beans, commonly in the sun, ensures the correct fermentation process is not compromised on the beans’ long trip to the chocolate maker.
STEP 4:
Roasting
Before roasting, beans are inspected and sorted. Roasting time and temperature depend on the profile of the raw bean. Generally beans are roasted in temps of 250°F up to 350°F for 30 to 90 minutes.
STEP 5:
Winnowing
Roasted beans are cooled, cracked and winnowed in order to separate the husk from the nib.
STEP 6:
Grinding
Depending on the flavor profile, the nibs are ground to a fine paste using a stone melanger. In this step we add our organic sugar and cacao butter and grind to a fine consistency.
STEP 7:
Tempering
Through a series of heating and cooling the chocolate is prepared for its final step where it will have a distinct shine and snap.
STEP 8:
Moulding
The tempered chocolate is poured into moulds and cooled before being wrapped and labeled. And then the fun of enjoying the taste begins!