If there is one thing that I have learned while being in Madagascar, it’s that there isn’t much of a chocolate culture in Madagascar. Cocoa was introduced in the 1920′s by the French so there is no history of native chocolate preparations. If people consume cocoa, they either eat it fresh from the pod or [...] Read more »
The day after we visited the family farm and the coop, we got a special tour of one of the biggest cocoa plantations in Madagascar, the Somia plantation. Somia is run by Bertile’s Akkeson’s family (Bertile is the man we had lunch with on the beach on at Nosy Be) and supplies beans to some of [...] Read more »
Madagascar grows some of the best cocoa in the world and Ambanja is where it all comes from. It’s on the northwest part of the island and we went there on Sunday to visit a few plantations. Two technicians from the American chocolate company Madecasse took us to two farms and explained the harvesting, fermenting [...] Read more »
After visiting Chocolat Bonnat in Voiron, France, we made our way back to Paris and boarded a flight for Madagascar. It was a long flight (about 10 hours), and we arrived in the airport in capital of Antananarivo, nicknamed Tana, at midnight! After waiting in immigration for an hour for our visas to be issued, [...] Read more »
Introduction to Amy’s Story I first met Amy at one of the early Chocolate Shows in New York demonstrating how to make chocolate from beans using home kitchen appliances she’d modified herself. Amy started making chocolate for a school project even when she was told she would not be able to succeed. Amy took these [...] Read more »