Interview with a Chocolate Maker: Art Pollard of Amano Chocolate & Recipe Contest!!!

I want to thank Mr. Art Pollard for the dedication to his craft. For not taking shortcuts. For filling his product with the passion of an artist with his paintings. We might not all be Chocolate Makers but we certainly are able to behold the beauty of fine chocolate such as this. Mr. Pollard has made it possible for me to taste his chocolate. And guess what? You too! I will tell you how shortly. But first an interview. A warning: I am not a professional journalist but an food enthusiast. I want you to know the man behind the chocolate.

Before we start it was recently announced that Amano Chocolate has won 5 awards from London's Academy of Chocolate which is the Olympics of the chocolate world! Congratulations!

Now for the interview:

Why did you agree to do this interview? To be blunt I am not exactly Gourmet Magazine.

I love talking to people about chocolate! Chocolate and how it is made is an incredibly fascinating subject and quite frankly, it is what I am passionate about. Chocolate reaches into our soul in so many ways and speaks to each of us. Each person hears that call in different ways. Some are passionate about chocolate because of its incredible flavor and complexity (such as I am), some are passionate for the nostalgia, some the mouth feel, some the history, some are wooed by the romance. In the end though, each for their own reasons, we have all been captured by the desire for chocolate and that is what has brought us here.

Sure, you aren't Gourmet Magazine. But does it matter? You and your readers are captured by the passion that is chocolate just as I am and just as are the readers of Gourmet.

Will you always try to keep your company small or do you want something more? Is there an ultimate goal you had when you created your company?

The ultimate goal I had when I started Amano is still my ultimate goal. That is simply to create the very best chocolate possible ? without compromise. Whether Amano grows or remains small will entirely be dependent on how I feel each step towards growth or not will take me towards my ultimate goal of creating the u ltimate chocolate. So far, I believe that we are off to a good start. People seem to like our chocolate. And quite a few like it a-lot. However, I also believe we still have quite a number of ways that we can improve. Each and every day, we work on improving those areas.

When did chocolate invade your life? Was it a life change?

My fiancée and I flew to Hawai'i in 1996 to get married. As you can imagine, we stayed in Hawai'i for our honeymoon. One day, we were downtown Honolulu and we stumbled on a high-end Belgian confectionery outlet. They had the most beautiful bon bons and truffles, they gleamed like jewels in the display case. They were expensive too, several dollars each. I was just out of school and didn't have much money and our honeymoon was about all I could afford at the time. Even so, the lady at the counter convinced me to purchase a couple bon bons and as soon as I tasted them, I knew that chocolate could be so much more than what I had seen in the store.

I had become interested in making my own chocolate a few years before but when I saw chocolate's potential, this really made me pursue making my own chocolate from scratch and work to bring out chocolate's full potential. Since this time, my life has taken a drastic change and while I always dedicate myself fully into each and every thing that I do, I have never worked as hard as I do now pursuing my passion for making the very best chocolate possible. I must say as point of note, my wife has been incredibly patient and supportive considering the great amount of effort and work involved.

If you had to live on a desert island and could only choose one box, which of your chocolate bars would you b ring?

Most definitely, our variety pack. Honestly. Most all of our customers ask ?Which chocolate do you like the best?? Quite frankly, each of the chocolates we have created are in my opinion exceptional. If they were not, we would not have allowed them to be released. I have found that in many ways, they are a lot like children. Each chocolate has its own wonderful aspects and that is what you love it for. Perhaps some days, I may want to spend more time with one than another but that doesn't mean that I love the others less. Their time will come and it is all a matter of my mood and which I feel most passionate about at the time.

If you couldn?t bring your chocolate on the desert island whose would you bring?

I love Cocoa-Samoa. It is a chocolate like drink that is made from heavily roasted and ground up cocoa beans. It is the national drink in Samoa -- at least unofficially so. They roast the cocoa beans really dark like coffee. Perhaps it is my love for the Polynesian islands and their cultures that makes me love it so much but if I had to choose something to bring along, that is what I'd bring. It reminds me so much of my time living in Hawai'i and the good friends I have there. Besides, if I'm on a desert island, odds of having proper refrigeration to keep real chocolate cool would be pretty small.

What is the best dish you have tasted that included chocolate?

Not long ago, I had dinner at Alice Water's restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley California. ChezPanisse is perhaps the most influential restaurant in the country and the owner, Alice Waters, has really done an incredible job telling people about the virtues of super-fresh high quality foods. Needless to say, the dinner was absolutely incredible. At the end though was something that really made me take pause. They brought out chocolate truffles that they made with our chocolate. It was the not only the highlight of my meal but one of the chocolate moments that I will treasure for the rest of my life.

Have you ever had a chocolate disaster in your factories? If so, the next time I will help you clean it up hehe.

We have had our shares of disasters. I think every chocolate maker has.

One thing about making chocolate, there is no such thing as a small disaster. Each time I make a batch of chocolate, I am petrified. I must get it right ? absolutely right and when you are on a razor's edge, it is easy for mistakes to happen. A disaster is expensive too. When I load a bag of cocoa beans into the roaster, I have no illusions, that roast costs on the order of $400-$500 and if there is a moment's inattention and I make a mistake, then I am out the cocoa beans, the money, and frequently, they can not easily be replaced. That is just roasting of course. There are plenty of other aspects of the chocolate making process where serious mistakes are possible. In fact, in my opinion, each and every step of the chocolate making process is the most important step. Each step affects flavor and each step has the potential to ruin the batch of chocolate.

Luckily, at this point, we are feeling fairly confident in what we are doing. We have put safeguards in place to guard against serious mistakes and each day, we polish what we are doing and look for ways that we can improve our process.

Even so, mistakes still occasionally happen. When they do, we throw out the chocolate. I have several companies that have offered to buy any defective chocolate since they can blend it with truckloads of the chocolate they use. When a mistake happens, we don't sell them the chocolate, instead we choose to throw it away. It is my way of making a point to myself that we don't make that same mistake twice. So far, that has worked.

You know we have coffee shops and wineries. Have you ever thought of making a chocolate tasting bar?

A chocolate tasting bar would be a wonderful thing. I think one would have to approach it carefully since dark chocolate is so satisfying, it would be easy for people to be chocolated out if it is simply a place to "taste". At the same time, there are some wonderful cafes throughout the country though that highlight chocolate in some really wonderful ways. For example, the Chocolati Chocolate Cafe in Seattle has 20 - 30 chocolate drinks both hot and cold. They have truffles and other chocolate item s. (No bars the last time I checked.) I always make it a point to stop there whenever I am in the neighborhood.

Where and what was the best meal you ever had?

Wow. That is a good question. I have so many memorable meals and each is unique and beautiful in its own way.

I spent some time landscaping and and going to school in Hawai'i. I fell in love with the islands, the island culture and of course the incredible island food. I still have many close friends who live there and their food still influences me. The combination of incredibly fresh food, the fusion of the many different cultures (Chinese, Japanese, Portugese, European, in addition to the multitude of Polynesian cultures) along with close friends all come together for some incredible meals. Eating taro baked in coconut milk with shoyu chicken and rice after a hard day landscaping with my fellow workers and friends. So simple, and so very good. Eating at one of the best restaurants on the North Shore with a good friend while the sun slowly dropped below the horizon creating a spectacular sunset shaped my view of fine quality food and what constitutes the perfect dinner. And of course if I did not mention eating at Alan Wong's on King Street in Honolulu, it would be a tragedy. This is easily one of the single most memorable meals I have ever had and each time I go back to the islands, Alan Wong's is a stop I look forward to months in advance and is usually the first and last place I eat at when I reach the islands. Alan Wong has in my opinion captured perfection in food as well as anyone. Of course, I am biased, the food in Hawai'i has long spoke to me both the local ?grinds? as well as the very finest food and freshest seafoods available in the islands.

There are many other great meals here on the ?mainland?. Many can easily be classified as ?the best? in so many ways and so many have been so close to perfection. In the end, the perfect meal speaks to your soul. This means it is all about the food and the friends you were with. And each time those two come together perfectly, it is my ?best meal.?

Okay. Worst case scenario. Your factory burns down?you lose everything. Would you start over? Would you do anything differently?

Absolutely, I would rebuild. Chocolate is in my blood and I love the process of turning cocoa beans into the most perfect chocolate I possibly can. I love the happiness it brings to people and the way chocolate touches people's hearts.

Of course, there are many things I would do differently. There has been quite a bit of trial and error and we are still looking for ways to improve. To start again, would be an opportunity to take all that I have learned and build a factory that is even better and hopefully could make even better chocolate than our current one can.

At the same time, much of the machines we have are specialized and are very difficult to locate. It isn't like you can simply order these machines out of a catalog and So if we were to have to start again, it would be quite a bit of work.

If the factory burned down, I would still have a really good cry. Many of our machines are close to one hundred years old and perhaps belong in a museum more than the belong on the factory floor. They all have history and have brought close to a century of joy and passion to people throughout the world. It would be a tragedy to lose them and to lose their heritage.

Which of your chocolate bars are you most proud of?

Most definitely the Cuyagua. My love for Cuyagua centers around a single experience I had at the Cuyagua plantation. Cuyagua is very remote and it is quite a journey to get there. It is a very small colonial town with only two streets (one goes up one side of the block and the other down the other side.) I gave some of our single origin Cuyagua chocolate to each of the farmers. We were the first chocolate company to make a single origin chocolate with only Cuyagua beans and they had never had chocolate made from their beans before. One older farmer, tried it and he looked at me and said: "This chocolate is like a river." I thought it an odd comment and so I asked him what he meant by that. He said, "This chocolate takes you on a journey in flavor to all these wild and beautiful places and it goes on and on like a river."

To think that so far from "civilization" I would run into such a poet and that he saw such poetry in the chocolate made with the beans that he helped grow, harvest, ferment, and dry. Each time I think of this experience, I tear up just a little bit and it reminds me of what a wonderful food chocolate is and how it reaches deep within each of our souls.

If not the Cuyagua (since it is currently out of stock), I'd have to say it is a toss-up between our Madagascar and our newest bar the Montanya (limited edition). The Madagascar that won a gold from London's Academy of Chocolate for chocolate made all the way from the bean. This is a huge feat -- one never accomplished by and American chocolate maker. The Academy's annual awards comprise of a roundup of the best chocolatiers and chocolate makers throughout the world -- the Olympics of chocolate. It is really very humbling that in our little factory here in the U.S. won such a award and one given by the Europeans to boot. The other bar, Montanya is a spectacular bar made from cocoa beans grown high in the mountains of northern Venezuela. The flavor is spectacular and as it ages (yes, chocolate ages just like wine does), it gets better and better. The Montanya won a silver from London's Academy of Chocolate and I am thrilled with how much people really enjoy it and it is the one I gravitate to most frequently (lately).

If you were blindfolded and you tasted each of your chocolate bars would you be able to name them?

No doubt about it. They are, in many ways, my children who I know and love. How can one mistake their children?

Do you ever have chocolate overload?

Nope. Never. At same time, I only eat really good quality chocolate so I'm pretty careful about what chocolate I eat. I'm pretty spoiled at this point. While we have several absolutely incredible milk chocolates, our focus is on dark chocolate and getting the flavors perfectly right. One of the beauties of dark chocolate is that it is rich and its very richness and lack of sugar (that causes sugar cravings) tends to limit that amount of chocolate eaten. So I eat enough chocolate to satisfy me and my chocolate cravings.

What is your favorite pastime after chocolate?

Is there life without chocolate? I'm not so sure.

I love to attend the Oregon Shakespearian Festival. I've been attending (mostly) regularly since 1983. I've gotten to know many of the actors, directors, and principals within the festival and many consider me a "local" even though I'm only in Ashland, Oregon for a week or two a year.

This dovetails with my love of reading, I read huge amounts and have literally 1,000's of books. Wherever I am at, a book is not far away. I love the Romantics -- (Romantic with a capital "R") -- with Hugo being one of my favorite authors for the way he captures the nobleness of the human spirit and his idealism.

If Mr. Hershey-Man CEO came down to your factory and offered you six figures would you take it?

Nope. I do not at all believe in building a business with the intention of selling it. Many people do this and for them it works. In my opinion however, I find that my vision simply does not fit in that model. Some consumer products improve when a larger corporation comes in ? they have experience, economies of scale, production facilities, etc. They watch the bottom line because that is their responsibility to their shareholders. But when it comes to specialty products, I simply do not believe that same model works. I have seen it time and time again when specialty companies are purchased, the first thing that happens is that the bean-counters come in and look at all the inefficiencies and start trimming. Typically, the quality is the first thing that suffers and then packaging, customer service, etc. While bean-counters have an important job to do, they often do not realize that it is those extra touches (and expenses) that truly make a company great and a product special.

Perhaps more importantly, if you are building a business with the intention of selling it, what it means is that your business isn't your driving passion. If your business is not your driving passion, it is very difficult to take the business to the next level and ensure that your products are pure artistry as we try to do. (Whether we make it or not, I'll let others decide but that is our intent each and every day we go to work.)

Last question: Is there anything you want us to know about you that doesn?t have to do with chocolate?

I love what I'm doing. This has a bit to do with chocolate but in other ways, it doesn't. I believe, it is very important that people follow their passions and find the things that will really drive them to excellence. It doesn't matter if it is an executive position for a large company, or a cook, or a janitor. The most important thing is that each person find what really drives them and then to pursue it with every fiber of their being. That is what I try to do with everything that I do including my hobbies and so far, it has worked out pretty good.

Now you know the man behind the chocolate. But what about the company? I am happy to report their standards are very high.

"Amano always pays farmers and o-ops significantly more for their product than is set by the 'fair trade' organizations. It is very costly and legthy process for a farmer to become fair-trade certified, and most simply can't afford it. We believe in paying a premium price for premium cocoa beans-typically three to four times the London Cocoa Terminal Market price. This ensures that we obtain the highest quality beans availible and that the farmers we buy from can provide for thier families. We don't pay the prices we pay to get a label on the package. We do it beause it is the right thing to do."



Now for the tasting:

Ocumare: 30% Milk Chocolate (Venezuela)

At first I taste the vanilla bean then a flood of chocolate. Extremely delicate. Most delicious milk chocolates I have ever tasted. (I dislike milk chocolate)

Jembrana: 30% Milk Chocolate (Bali)

Definately nutty. Floral. Both milk chocolates are smooth but this one is remiscent of coffee.

Cuyagua: 70% Dark Chocolate (Venezuela) Limited Edition
At first it is almost bitter then it turns creamy as it warms up. Nutty and spicy.

Jembrana: 70% Dark Chocolate (Bali)

Nutty...and very floral. This is so much different than Cuyagua. A bit of a tang at the end.

Montanya: 70% Dark Chocolate (Venezuela)

Gosh this one is fruity right away and sweet. Surprising with dark chocolate.

Madagascar: 70 Dark Chocolate

This one is fruity as well but different. Smoother. A nice catch in the back of my throat.

Oumare: 70% Dark Chocolate (Venezuela)

Fruit....almost savory. Floral.

This is hands down the best chocolate I have ever had. Of course I have yet to sample Patric's and Askinosie's but for right now...this is the best. What did I enjoy most? The milk chocolate believe it or not. Has Amano converted me to milk chocolate? I think so.

Do you want to taste Artisan Chocolate??? Then all you have to do is enter-----

Maman and Gourmand's Artisan Chocolate Recipe Contest!

Please say you are interested in competing in the comments below.

Entry dates are from May 21st through June 3rd.

Who Wins?: The recipe with the best use of chocolate. Sweet or savory...anything goes.

Make sure that you post your entry on your blog with the title being "Maman and Gourmand's Artisan Chocolate Recipe Contest!".

Please link back to this post.

Please have my button on your blog.

Please email me once you have your blog post completed. My email is mackfamily11@yahoo.com

Make sure your entry is in by noon on June 3rd.

Mr. Pollard of Amano Chocolate, Mr. McClure of Patric Chocolate, and Mr. Askinosie of Askinosie of Askinosie Chocolate will determine the three finalists.

I then will put up a poll open to the public for a week and the winner gets the Artisan Chocolate Package.

If you win you must agree to do a taste testing in 3 seperate blog posts by company.

More than anything? HAVE FUN!

So what will you win? Well...if I taste it then you will taste it. So keep up with the posts to see what you can sample! If you need help in how to do a chocolate tasting here is a link that Amano has provided. I want to thank Amano Chocolate for providing pictures to share with you.