Small Truths About Chocolate
1. Cacao is not a powder – it’s a bean.
Like grapes for wine, each cacao bean carries the taste of its terroir, variety, and fermentation.
2. Chocolate doesn’t grow on trees.
What grows is the cacao pod. Inside: sweet pulp and bitter beans. That’s where it all begins.
3. Fermentation is the first key to flavor.
Without it, beans remain acidic, astringent, vegetal. When properly fermented, they reveal fruity, floral, spicy, or honeyed notes.
4. Less than 5% of global cacao is considered fine.
The rest is commodity cacao, selected for yield,rarely for flavor.
5. You can make chocolate without ever touching a bean.
Most chocolatiers buy ready-made couverture, which they simply melt and mold.
At Orfève, we start from the bean.
6. Each bean contains about 50% cocoa butter.
That’s what allows chocolate to melt… at exactly body temperature.
7. Truly raw chocolate doesn’t exist.
Cacao beans are usually fermented, which naturally heats them above 45 °C. Without roasting, both flavor and food safety are compromised.
8. Chocolate is a living material.
Too much moisture, heat, poor tempering, or improper storage: it turns white, brittle, oxidized.
When well crafted and well stored, it remains stable, glossy, silky, and deep.
9. Roasting a bean is like roasting coffee or baking bread.
Too much heat kills flavor. Too little, and acidity takes over.
Each roast is a matter of taste.
10. The real luxury of chocolate is the bean.
Not the packaging, not the price, not the rarity. Real luxury lies in the hand that grows, the hand that crafts, and the precision in between.