And there are people who make the world a better place to live.
Shawn Askinosie just happens to do both. Spectacularly well, I might add.
You have read in previous postings here about Shawn, who makes, in my humble opinion, the Best Chocolate in the United States. Period.
His Askinosie San Jose Del Tambo Bar from Ecuador belongs on a pedestal in the Chocolate Hall of Fame for its rich, sensuous mouthfeel and long, lingering melt-y finish.
If there were an American Idol of Chocolate, the program wouldn’t get past the season’s first broadcast – because there are no other contenders worthy of the title “Best American Chocolate Maker,” other than Askinosie.
You may know chocolate products such as those made by San Francisco’s brilliant Michael Recchiuti, but his are chocolate confections. Recchiuti is not a chocolate-maker; he buys someone else’s couverture chocolate to craft his bonbons and tablets. By contrast, Shawn Askinosie starts from scratch with raw cacao beans and makes chocolate.
In case you’ve been avoiding the gourmet chocolate aisle: Askinosie is a small batch chocolate maker in Springfield, Missouri, which only sources beans directly from farmers. This is a helluva mission statement to implement, as Shawn has found out.
You can read my earlier comments about Askinosie Chocolate here:
http://napaman.typepad.com/napamancom/2008/02/enlightened-abo.html
http://www.napaman.com/napamancom/2008/10/index.html
Until now, Shawn’s sources of single origin cacao have been: South America (Ecuador), the Pacific (Davao, in the Philippines) and Suconusco, in Mexico.
But now he has a new venture, a new bar, and a remarkably selfless NGO (Non-Governmental Organization)-type project based in Tanzania.
As Tanzania is my old stomping ground, I have a particular warm spot for Shawn’s new, Out of Africa project. As a foreign correspondent in Africa in the early 70s, I traipsed all over Tanzania during its ujamaa socialist period. (Ujamaa comes from the Swahili word for ‘extended family,” which spawned the nation’s social and economic policies at that time.)
About 18 months ago, Shawn got it into his head that he wanted to add a new chocolate bar to his line-up, sourcing cacao beans from Africa, home of much of the world’s cocoa. This meant finding a small farmer cooperative with whom he could work directly to source beans.
After a thorough review of many African countries where cacao grows, Shawn settled on beans coming from Uwate, a women’s’ farmer group in Tenende, Tanzania. He liked the quality of the beans and the caliber of the farmers.
This business exchange marks the first time any cocoa farmer in Tanzania has contracted directly with a chocolate maker, cutting out middleman and bean brokers. As Shawn says: “ We have to cut out the middle men and let the farmers earn the full, fair-trade payment for their crop and hard work.”
As much as he wanted to make great African chocolate, Shawn also wanted to “do the right thing” for his own community. He wanted young people in Springfield to learn about life on the other side of the planet, as well as get a sense of how a small business operates.
So he created “Chocolate University” to serve these ends.
As well, he created “Cocoa Honors,” a neighborhood program, designed to inspire teenagers about small business and social responsibility.
The Cocoa Honors Group
The outcome? Last August, Shawn led 13 Springfield high school juniors to the village of Tenende, Tanzania, to meet the Uwate cocoa farmers.
Shawn in Tenende, speaking to local students
The Cocoa Honors students had raised $15,000 in their own community to perform a service project in the Africa community. With the aid of Maji-Tech Engineering Ltd. on site, the students drilled a deep-water well in the village, providing potable water for Tenende’s 2,000 residents.
Shawn initiates the water pump, which his Cocoa Honors students helped build in Tenende.
But back to chocolate. Shawn’s commercial intent from the get-go was to develop a rich chocolate tablet made only with Tenende’s cacao; two weeks ago, after two year’s hard work, Shawn released his new Askinosie Tenende Tanzania Chocolate Bar.
It is 72 percent by weight dark chocolate, and the 3 percent cocoa butter comes from the same Tanzanian cacao beans – it’s not added from a batch of beans from some other country.
The bar is sweetened with organic sugar and, like Askinosie’s other bars, contains no lecithin and no vanilla. For what it’s worth: I’m not aware of any other chocolate maker in the world who can make this claim.
At the first sign of melting on the tongue, the Tanzanian tablet releases flavors of bright fruit, toasted tobacco and a sheen of mahogany; there follows a mixture of spice, dark ripe cherries, and tree bark with a hint of resin.
This is a very complex tasting chocolate, possibly Shawn’s most complex achievement yet. The Tanzania Bar ends with a mouth-coating dryness similar to how a too-young California Cabernet finishes, drying out the inside of one’s cheeks.
This is NOT sweet chocolate; this is NOT milk chocolate; this is not your namby-pamby Hershey bar.
Askinosie’s web site calls this “a mild bar.” I respectfully disagree with the chocolate maestro. This is a chocolate, which kicks you in the balls and says: “Pay attention!” I’d call it the Green Beret of Chocolates… It takes no prisoners!
The 85 gram bar is $8 online and similarly priced in gourmet food stores, which carry Askinosie Chocolates.
Wanna kick in the balls? Place an order for Askinosie Tanzania Bar at http://www.askinosie.com
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