At his family’s plantation in Madagascar, Bertil Åkesson of Åkesson’s chocolate grows cacao and pepper and turns them both into delightful chocolate. Three of his bars recently won awards at the Academy of Chocolate Awards in London. He faced some of the world’s greatest chocolatiers and came away with a hat trick. Congratulations to Bertil! Here are the descriptions for his winning bars.

Brazil 75%

Our Brazil 75% bar  is made with an astonishing forastero variety of cocoa called “parasinho” that grows in Brazil’s Mata Atlântica – the wild forest with the highest biodiversity on earth – where we purchased a 120-hectare plantation. This chocolate is very smooth and has very expressive notes that evoke wood, autumn scents, and the local pitanga fruit.

Bali 45% milk chocolate & fleur de sel

Our 45% milk chocolate bar is the first Balinese single-origin bar ever made in Europe. This chocolate holds a caramelized flavor resulting from the use of natural sugar produced from the juice of coconut blossoms, harvested by gently slicing the flower. Once collected, the nectar is kettle-boiled into a thick caramel and ground to a fine crystal. With a very low glycemic index, this sugar is a great and healthy match for our Balinese fleur de sel. The cocoa is produced by the Sukrama family on seven hectares in the Melaya area in the western part of the island.

Madagascar 75% Criollo cocoa

Our Madagascar 75% bar has a very expressive cocoa aroma with subtle fruity-sweet tartness and pleasant flavor notes that evoke citrus and red berries, the true taste of the very best cocoa beans from Madagascar. Our 2,300-hectare family estate in the Sambirano Valley in northwestern Madagascar has produced world-famous aromatic cocoa since 1920. Besides 300 tons per year of trinitario cocoa, a very limited production of criollo cocoa – two tons per year -is harvested separately

Åkesson’s produces several other bars, including one with voatsiperifery pepper, a wild pepper that grows on creeping vines up to 20 meters (that’s 65 feet!) up in the tree canopy. All of Åkesson’s chocolates are available online from the Meadow and in both of our shops.

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I imagine Alessio and Cecilia Tessieri, the brother and sister founders of Amedei, were drowning in Champagne on the night of the announcement. Nonetheless, they managed to comment: “We are very proud of this award. Our objective shall always remain that of producing the best chocolate in the world, dedicating it to all our supporters. We thank the Academy of Chocolate for this award, and for the seriousness and passion it puts in its worldwide work in search of good quality chocolate.”

Here is their announcement, edited slightly, because while I respect their palates, “harbouring” all those “colourful” extra ‘u’s hogs up RAM on my “computour.”

Bear in mind here that the London Academy does have some vague geographical and other associations with England, and that these are genuine Britons doing the judging, and that these Britons have traditionally shown a distinct proclivity for all chocolates British. Nonetheless, non-Brits and newcomers from around the world have found their way to some of the top prizes in most categories.

For the third year running, the Italian chocolate house Amedei has won the ‘Golden Bean’: the Best “Bean to Bar’ chocolate award, this time with its Toscano 63%. (In 2007 Amedei virtually swept the awards with the Amedei Chuao taking the top marks for Gold, and Amedei Porcelana and Toscano Black 70% also taking gold.) Michel Cluizel’s Maralumi took a gold as well, as did the Valrhona Araguani). Amedei’s Chuao and Porcelana also won golds. However, this year competition was intense with French producer Valrhona, winning gold awards for its Manjari 64% and Guanaja 70%. Valrhona also scored highest and won the only gold in the Best Milk Bar category.

The Academy of Chocolate Awards 2008 received a record over 300 entries from chocolatier sacross Europe and the United States. s. Judging took place in London over 3 days. Judges included Academy members, leading food journalists such as Charles Campion and renowned chefs such as Mark Hix, as well as international chocolate experts from the U.S., Scandinavia and South America.

The ‘Golden Bean’, Best ‘chocolatier’ dark bar (made from existing liquor or couverture)

• Gold Amedei Toscano 63% (Italy)
• Gold Valrhona Manjari 64% (France)
• Gold Valrhona Guanaja 70%
• Gold Amedei Porcelana
• Gold Amedei Chuao
• Silver Amedei Toscano 66%
• Silver Amedei Toscano 70%
• Silver Amedei No 9
• Bronze Valrhona Caraibe 66%
• Bronze Hotel Chocolat St Lucia 72% (UK)
• Bronze Amano Madagascar 70% (USA)

Best House Dark Chocolate bar

• Gold William Curley 65% (UK)
• Gold William Curley 70%
• Silver Rococo Manjari 64% (UK)
• Silver Pamaco Samatari )(Switzerland)
• Silver Pamaco Maracado
• Bronze Demarquette 65% (UK)
• Bronze L’artisan du Chocolat Venezuela (USA)

Best Milk Chocolate Bar

• Gold Valrhona Jivara 40%
• Silver Amedei Toscano Brown
• Silver William Curley house
• Silver Pamaco Criovemi
• Bronze L’artisan du Chocolat Dominican republic
• Bronze L’artisan du Chocolat Madagascar

Best Flavored Dark Chocolate Bar

• Gold Sir Hans Sloane Rose Petal (UK)
• Gold Valrhona Manjari Orange
• Silver Donnelly’s Rose (USA)
• Silver Donnelly’s Lavender
• Silver Donnelly’s Coffee
• Silver Laurent Gerbaud Bergamot (Belgium)
• Silver Sir Hans Sloane Raspberry
• Silver Sir Hans Sloane Almond
• Bronze Green & Black’s Ginger (UK)
• Bronze New Tree 73% Pink Pepper (USA)
• Bronze Sir Hans Sloane Orange sesame

Best Flavored Milk Chocolate Bar

• Gold Amedei hazelnuts
• Silver L’artisan du Chocolate coffee
• Silver William Curley cinnamon
• Silver La Molina Latte menta (Italy)
• Bronze Paul A Young fennel seeds & ginger (UK)

Winning chocolate bars and drinking chocolates in a variety of other categories includeed:

Best Dark Organic Bar

• Silver Valrhona Cao Grande noir 70%
• Silver The Grenada Chocolate Company 71% (Grenada)
• Bronze Rococo house

Best Flavoured Dark Organic Bar

• Gold Theo fig, fennel & almond (USA)
• Bronze Rococo pink peppercorn

Best Milk Organic Bar

• Silver Valrhona Cao Grande lait

Best Flavored Milk Organic Bar

• Bronze Theo vanilla

Best Drinking Chocolate

• Gold Rococo house
• Gold Theo chipotle spiced
• Silver Paul A Young spiced
• Bronze William Curley chilli
• Bronze William Curley spiced
• Bronze Paul A Young house
• Bronze Grenada Smilo
• Bronze Hotel Chocolat original cocoa stick

Truffles are also judged by the London Academy of Chocolate. The winners of the Academy of Chocolate Awards for 2008 load up UK chocolatier William Curley with an impressive number of medals. These included a spectacular 4 Golds in the Best Filled Chocolate category with his Chuao filled chocolate scoring highest. The judges were particularly impressed by his Japanese Black Vinegar ganache and his Sesame ganache.

Best Ganache Filled Chocolate

• Gold William Curley Chuao
• Gold William Curley framboise
• Gold William Curley sesame
• Gold William Curley Japanese black vinegar
• Gold Theo fig & fennel
• Silver William Curley passion fruit & mango
• Silver Sir Hans Sloane passion fruit
• Silver Melt Amedei
• Silver William Curley thyme & honey
• Silver William Curley Early grey
• Silver William Curley szechuan pepper
• Silver Demarquette lemon
• Silver Melt raspberry
• Bronze Melt tonka, vanilla & sesame
• Bronze Melt passion fruit caramel & mandarin
• Bronze Paul Wayne Gregory coconut
• Bronze Melt orange on praline
• Bronze Indulgence orange
• Bronze William Curley wasabi
• Bronze William Curley jasmine
• Bronze Melt raspberry caramel
• Bronze Paul Wayne Gregory coffee
• Bronze William Curley honey
• Bronze Demarquette coffee
• Bronze Sir Hans Sloane Chinese tea
• Bronze William Curley sudachi
• Bronze Damian Allsop water based ganache
• Bronze Demarquette blanc manger, spices, coconut & rum
• Bronze Hotel Chocolat rabot 62%
• Bronze Auberge du Chocolat amedei house
• Bronze Demarquette honey
• Bronze Chococo cherry & kirsch
• Bronze Damian Allsop salty liquorice

Best Filled Praline or Bonbon

• Gold Guido Gobino salt & olive oil
• Gold William Curley juniper & cassis
• Gold William Curley sea salt caramel
• Silver William Curley fleur de sel
• Silver William Curley raspberry
• Silver Paul Wayne Gregory nuts
• Silver Rococo salt caramel
• Silver Theo sage caramel
• Bronze Hotel Chocolat Gianduja square
• Bronze William Curley pistachio

Best Plain Dark Truffle

• Gold William Curley
• Silver Rococo
• Silver Paul A Young
• Bronze L’artisan du Chocolat

Best Plain Milk Truffle

• Silver William Curley

The judges commented on the very wide range of flavoured chocolates this year, from traditional rose and violet to the fashionable sea salted caramels, as well as spiced chocolates and a move towards Japanese ingredients and natural liquorice. The judges were also impressed by the entries in the drinking chocolate category. Rococo won a Gold for its organic House chocolate as did US chocolate maker Theo for its fair trade organic chocolate chipotle spiced drinking chocolate. The judges remarked how the quality and range of presentation illustrated the revival in chocolate culture. Drinking chocolates were submitted from the UK, Europe and America and were presented as sticks (reminiscent of how the Mayans and Aztecs produced chocolate from as far back as the 10th century), flakes, powder, bars and nuggets.

Sara Jayne Stanes, OBE, chair of the Academy of Chocolate says of the Awards “The awards grow year on year and we were delighted with the number, and quality, of entries we received this year. We hope that these annual Awards will help consumers, retailers and restaurateurs to make enlightened choices about the chocolate they buy.

Thanks folks at the London Chocolate Academy for your brilliant work!

With these words ripe on the tongue, bite into the Vosges Bacon Chocolate Bar, officially known as Mo’s Bacon Bar. The bacon bar is a dark milk chocolate, combined with applewood smoked bacon, alder smoked salt, and 41% deep milk chocolate.

Vosges Haut-Chocolat is rightly famed for the witty and trendy blends concocted by Vosges founder Katrina Markoff, who possesses that rare blend of skills that ranges from concocting to packaging to marketing chocolate. As the list of chocolate candy bars grows (and I will always take off my hat to Katrina for making flavored chocolate bars and calling them “candy bars.” Humility? Playfulness?), the genesis and of ever-more daring and bold entries seems inevitable. My personal feelings toward the incessant perfection of the Vosges candy bar has gone from weariness to resignation to acceptance to embrace to enthusiasm. Vosges candy bars exhibit the clarity of purpose and democratic elegance of a backyard chicken coop.

So what does it taste like?

Bacon and chocolate. The alderwood smoked salt adds a little sparkly campfireyness to the applewood smoked bacon and the deep (41%) milk chocolate. The flavor goes together in a way that is jarring for almost no-one, and pleasantly homey for most.

The fact that you can really taste the bacon is a key success of the chocolate. In my assessment, this is carried off largely on the back of the milk in the milk chocolate. Milk acts as a buffer and a binder–dairy is the great equalizer, and is the natural intermediary if you think of America’s most successful hybrid dishes such as faux carbonara (pancetta from pasta carbonara and cream from pasta alfredo). Milk in chocolate has historically been used, among other reasons, to cut the harsh taste of cheap cacao. Vosges uses good quality chocolate, but seems to be using milk in many of the candy bars in order to help the flavors behave themselves and get along together. The most spectacular bacon chocolates I know, such as the unsurpassed Bacon + Chocolate bar by Xocolatl de David, of are made using a ganache, which consists primarily of heavy cream and dark chocolate–so I’m not sure there is any other way to carry this off.

That said, if I were a chocolatier I would invent a less meddlesome intermediary, such a… bread. (The tastiest thing I ever ate in my entire life, other than a grouse I once hand-caught and fire-roasted whilst starving as a teen-ager on a canoe trip in Canada, was a crusty baguette sandwich made of dark chocolate and crispy-chewy fried bits of fatty bacon (lardons) at a friends house in France.)

So, check it out, and do not be surprised if you like it. It makes a great addition to the stable of current bars by Vosges.

• The best-selling Barcelona Exotic Candy Bar of hickory smoked almonds + fleur de sel gray sea salt + deep milk chocolate
• The oooh and ahhh-provoking Asian-sexy Black Pearl Exotic Candy Bar of ginger + wasabi + black sesame seeds + dark chocolate
• The frisky-hip Calindia Exotic Candy Bar of Indian green cardamom + organic California walnuts + dried plums + Venezuelan dark chocolate
• The groovy bluesy bayoosy Creole Exotic Candy Bar of cocoa nibs + New Orleans style coffee + Sao Thome bittersweet chocolate
• The jumpy happy lazy Woolloomooloo Exotic Candy Bar of roasted & salted macadamia nuts + Indonesian coconut
• The classically elegant Italophile’s Gianduja Exotic Candy Bar of almonds + hazelnuts + deep milk chocolate
• The loftily flexy yogi-righteous Goji Exotic Candy Bar of Tibetan goji berries + pink Himalayan salt + deep milk chocolate
• The ceremonial soothing and smoothing Macha Exotic Candy Bar of macha green tea + deep milk chocolate
• The ambiguous smiling alluringly-yet-motherly Naga Exotic Candy Bar of sweet Indian curry powder + coconut flakes + deep milk chocolate
• The coyote hunting Oaxaca Exotic Candy Bar of Oaxacan guajillo y pasilla chillies + Tanzanian bittersweet chocolate
• The weird hip wiggling yet happy-go-lucky d’Oliva Exotic Candy Bar of Kalamata olives + Venezuelan white chocolate
• The smoking-cloves-on-the-rooftop-of-a-Tijuana discothech Red Fire Exotic Candy Bar of Mexican ancho and chipotle chili peppers + Ceylon cinnamon + dark chocolate.

Meat. Fruit. Veg. What are we missing? A James Joyce would propound obliquely: “Bread, or liquid bread.” I predict some derivation of Mariebelle’s beautiful Croquette au Chocolate: which consists of buttery European, cookies for a crunchy texture, combined with MarieBelle’s dark and milk chocolate Colombian couverture.

However, if any chocolatiers are reading, I have an even better suggestion to ride the wave of porcophilia taking the country by storm. Adopt the chocolate-makers practice of noting what percentage of the bar is actual bacon. For example, neophytes and small children could eat the 25% Bacon Chocolate bar. The fearful yet curious could eat the 50% Bacon Chocolate Bar. Intrepid louts like myself might opt for the 85% bacon chocolate bar (which might be something like 85% bacon, 7.5 percent sugar, and 7.5 percent chocolate. Then, the unromantic maniacs who miss the point altogether could just get the 99% bacon chocolate bar, which contains almost no chocolate at all, but is really just a big slab of bacon dusted with cocoa powder. Available only at the butcher.

But as with everything in life, the devil is in the detail. Salted 80% dark Italian blended chocolate (Salinae bar by Antica Dolceria Bonajuto) has nothing to do with 80% dark Italian Ecuadorian chocolate a chocolate (Blacksal by Domori), which in turn has virtually nothing in common with a 74% dark Italian blended chocolate served up side by side with Trapani and Cervia sea salts (Cioccolato Fondente al Sale di Cervia by Cioccolato di BruCo).

The power of salt to coax out, elucidate, and expand on the flavor of food does not stop with the savory. Actually, the idea that sweet and savory are somehow opposite is strange, and actually at odds with our natural affinity for diversity and complexity in food. Eat Ethiopian and you will find your fingers plunged in sugar on lamb with tamarind; eat dim sum and half the time you are eating donuts and pork. My grandpa was in love with apple pie with cheddar cheese. At any rate, chocolate is not even a sweet until after it is sweetened, and that can be done with much more deftness than is common.

Jennifer and I have been tinkering with salted chocolate for a while, and after due deliberation (martinis involved), we decided to dive headlong into a vat of 75% dark couverture from an uber premium plantation on the small island state of Sao Tome and Principe, and make our own salted chocolate. I don’t pretend to be neutral about the benefits of salt combined with chocolate, and I know that the sequence of words that follows does have much hope of shaping itself into proper sentence structure, but let’s have it out it anyway: The Meadow’s salted chocolate comes after chomping and melting and smelling and ogling lots and lots of salted dark chocolates such as the above–and many others (and several salted milk chocolates, including a salted goat’s milk chocolate from Austria that I am having a devil of a time getting into the country), Sahagun‘s heart palpitating Palomitapapá, Xocolatl de David’s barnyard brawling bacon salted chocolate to fleur de sel topped chocolate chip cookies dropped off by an especially adorable customer, our own smoked salt-laced chocolate soufflé and chocolate dipped fresh-candied ginger and salt, and the list goes on and on.

So in short, check out the results. Our absolute favorite 75% dark chocolate tempered to perfection, sprinkled lightly with a sea salt that we think reveals something heretofore undiscovered dark chocolate, and then repeated six times:

• Iburi Jio cherrywood roasted salt on dark chocolate (smokey and bacony – Iburi Jio Cherry gourmet salt);
• Pangasinan Star fleur de sel on dark chocolate (delicate, lightly sweet, and balanced – Pangasinan Star gourmet salt);
• Moshio ancient Japanese seaweed salt on dark chocolate (savory, round, full- Amabito No Moshio gourmet salt);
• Grigio di Cervia Italian gros sel style sea salt and dark chocolate (sweet, red berried, champaign sparkly – Grigio di Cervia Gourmet salt);
• Turkish Black Pyramid Mediterranean sea on dark chocolate (subtle, gentle, earthily complex, and the unexpected favorite at a recent salted chocolate class at The Meadow – Turkish Black Pyramid gourmet salt);
• Halen Mon Gold Welsh sea salt smoked with ancient Welsh Oak and dark chocolate (warm, caramely, with delicate tobacco – Halen Mon Gold gourmet sea salt).

I just put them up on our website, so you can give them a try. Play soundtrack. Think of some Clint Eastwood-style fade-away into the gloaming as a slim, somber rider canters off amidst the faint yapping of coyotes.

Answer: A coffee bar.

Caffe Acapella has created a bar replacing chocolate solids with coffee solids. Or to be precise, they blend cocoa butter coffee mass to create a chocolate/coffee bar. Caffe Acapella makes a Caffe Acapella espresso bar called the Espresso Serenade (just plain espresso blend (of three arabica beans) and a Caffe Acapella cappuccino bar called the Cappuccino Connoisseur. I met the folks at Caffe Acapella in New York a few months ago. They had the zealous rabid glow of belief in what they were doing that is agreeable in anyone working in food.

The Caffe Acapella website explains the flavor experience they hope to achieve thusly:

“To understand the quality of our products is to understand truly fine espresso and how our patent pending formulas and processes convert the beloved drink to a solid form. Although used by roasters to denote certain types of bean blends roasted in an Italian (dark) style, the term espresso actually refers more to a coffee drink prepared by a certain method invented and made famous by the Italians. In this method, the espresso machine rapidly forces hot water at high pressure through the ground coffee bean – in contrast to conventional drip methods of coffee preparation where near scalding water is slowly passed through the ground coffee without pressure. The espresso technique results in a gentler but more thorough extraction of the coffee flavor from the bean, especially the particularly flavorful coffee oils… Since our bars contain the entire bean, finely milled to gently release all the precious coffee oil, we are able to capture a truly authentic espresso flavor…”

Technically, just as a white chocolate bar is still called chocolate, the Caffe Acapella espresso bar might still be called a chocolate bar that is heavily flavored with coffee. Ideed, with cocoa butter ranked as the number two ingredient after sugar, the bars have more cacao solids than coffee. (Ingredients: sugar, cocoa butter, milk (in the cappuccino bar), fresh roasted gourmet arabica espresso beans, and soy lecithin.) Likewise, the bars are as sweet as the sweetest white chocolate bars.

The Caffe Acapella coffee bars, (in the espress bar and the cappuccino bar) are sweet, but not necessarily sweet outside the realm of historical precedent.
Ever been to France, stood at the bar of a neighborhood cafe, and had one of those very dense, confidently bitter espressos the French working class are so fond of? Something I have witnessed more than once is a well-heeled homme d’affaires, or a surly trucker, or a petard-smoking concrete mason, dipping a cube of sugar into the cool dregs at the bottom of the espresso cup, then unapologetically popping the entire thing into his mouth before it has a chance to dissolve.

Sugar, coffee, with the buttery lip-balmy body of a chocolate bar. If this all coming up sounding short of a ringing endorsement of Caffe Acapella’s coffee bars, it is nonetheless a call to at least try one. Explore the similarities between your wanderlusting heart and that paragon of savoir vivre, the Gallic espresso drinker.