260美元一塊的巧克力

How does one enjoy a nearly $300 bar of chocolate? In the case of To’ak Chocolate, one pairs it with a really good glass of whiskey, cognac or rum, says co-founder Jerry Toth, who recommend',event)">recommends a Pappy Van Winkle, Frapin XO or El Dorado 21 year as options.

一塊售價將近300美元的巧克力應(yīng)該怎么吃呢?對于傳說中的To’ak巧克力來說，該公司聯(lián)合創(chuàng)始人杰瑞·托特表示，應(yīng)該搭配上好的威士忌、干邑白蘭地或朗姆酒。他極力推薦的是派比·范溫克威士忌、法拉賓XO、或劍魚號21年特藏陳年朗姆酒。

The former Wall Street investment banker turned environmental conservationist-chocolatier had an unlikely careertrajectory, but Toth says he’s putting his economics degree from Cornell to good use.

杰瑞·托特原本是一名華爾街投資銀行家，后來轉(zhuǎn)行成為一名巧克力大亨兼環(huán)保人士，這似乎是一條不可能出現(xiàn)的職業(yè)發(fā)展軌跡，不過托特本人卻表示，他并沒有白白浪費他在康奈爾大學(xué)(Cornell University)獲得的經(jīng)濟學(xué)學(xué)位。

While working at rainforest conservation organization Toth found himself in the valley of Piedra de Plata in the Ecuadorian province of Manabí. He left Wall Street after realizing pretty quickly that wasn’t the lifestyle for him. He relocated to South America where he met a woman from Ecuador who would become his girlfriend and soon help him launch a rainforest conservation organization in her home country. “We developed a 1,000 acre forest preserve in coastal Ecuador and started working with nearby farmers to reforest their cattle pastures with shade-grown cacao trees,” says Toth.

托特此前在一個熱帶雨林保護組織工作時，曾經(jīng)在厄瓜多爾馬納比省的普拉塔河谷待過一陣子。再往前追溯，托特還曾在華爾街奮斗過一段日子，不過很快他發(fā)現(xiàn)那不是自己喜歡的生活方式。于是他啟程前往南美的厄瓜多爾，在那里遇到了他后來的女朋友，她幫助托特在厄瓜多爾成立了一個熱帶雨林保護組織。托特回憶道：“我們在厄瓜多爾沿海建立了1000英畝雨林保護區(qū)，然后與當(dāng)?shù)剞r(nóng)民一道退耕還林，種植適合在蔭地生長的可可樹。”

Toth and his girlfriend also started growing cacao trees on their own experimental agroforestry plot, where they found groves of old cacao trees growing wild. “We started to harvest the fruit and ferment, dry and roast the beans and make our own chocolate, and immediately we recognized that this chocolate was in a different universe from anything else we had ever tasted that bore the name ‘chocolate,’” Toth says. “Only later did we find out that the cacao beans in this province of Ecuador have historically been considered the most prized variety in the world. It was like a wine maker one day waking up and someone telling him that he’s been living in the Côte d’Or, Burgundy his whole life.”

托特和他的女友也開始在自己的試驗田里種植可可樹，后來他們發(fā)現(xiàn)這里的老可可樹長得很快。“我們開始收割可可豆，然后進行發(fā)酵、脫水、烘烤，生產(chǎn)自己的巧克力，很快我們意識到，這種巧克力與我們之前吃過的所謂‘巧克力’相比，完全就像來自另一個星球。后來我們才發(fā)現(xiàn)，這個省的可可豆歷來被視為全世界最寶貴的品種。這就好像一個釀酒師一覺醒來，別人告訴他原來他這輩子一直住在勃艮第的金丘一樣。”

When Toth and his friend Carl Schweizer set out to find the best cacao beans to create their chocolate bar, they paid particular attention to the soil and climate in which the beans were grown. The flavor characteristics of cacao vary by location—think of it as similar to the characteristics of the different grape varieties used to produce wine.

當(dāng)托特和他的朋友卡爾·施威策開始尋找最適合制作巧克力的可可豆時，他們特地留意了這些可可豆生長的土壤和氣候?？煽啥沟娘L(fēng)味會隨著種植地的不同而產(chǎn)生差異，就好像不同產(chǎn)地的葡萄會釀出不同口味的紅酒一樣。

What Toth didn’t know was that an outbreak of “Witch’s Broom” disease all but decimated the source of Ecuador’s national treasure: the heirloom cacao tree. Most of the trees currently growing in the country are hybrids, bred with foreign varieties of cacao. Only scattered remnants of heirloom cacao trees are left, and those are usually found in remote pockets of the country, with the most cherished among them residing in the famous Arriba cacao growing region.

不過托特當(dāng)時并不知道，厄瓜多爾曾經(jīng)爆發(fā)過一場名叫“叢枝病”的病害，將本地的原生可可樹種摧毀殆盡。目前厄瓜多爾境內(nèi)的大多數(shù)可可樹，都是與外來樹種雜交的。厄瓜多爾的原生樹種只在少數(shù)地區(qū)零星散布，而且它們一般都位于該國的偏遠地區(qū)，其中有些最珍貴的原生樹種分布在該國最著名的阿銳巴可可樹種植區(qū)。

Toth and Schweizer set out to find the ideal appellation, which turned their attention upriver, toward the watersheds of the Daule and Babahoyo Rivers. They enlisted the help of a local friend, ServioPachard, a fourth generation Manabi cacao grower. His great-grandfather was one of the first men to settle the hinterlands of Managi, and Pachard’s own explorations of the region as an agroforestry specialist provided him access to isolated valleys beyond the reach of roads

托特和施威策動身去尋找理想的產(chǎn)區(qū)，最終他們把將目光投向多勒河和巴巴奧約河流域。他們得到一位當(dāng)?shù)嘏笥训膸椭?，他叫塞爾維奧·帕查德，既是馬納比地區(qū)第四代可可樹種植者，也是該地區(qū)的農(nóng)業(yè)專家。帕查德經(jīng)常在該地區(qū)進行探索，這種經(jīng)歷使他能夠找到那些遠離公路的偏僻山谷。

The expedition led them deep into the low-lying mountains where only a handful of Nacional Arriba cacao trees remained, some of which are more than 100 years of age. They found their source.

最終，他們深入到一片丘陵地帶，那里還存活著極少數(shù)原生的阿銳巴可可樹，其中有些樹已經(jīng)生長了100多年了。他們終于找到了自己需要的樹種。

Not all beans pass muster. “Our beans are subjected to six different phases of hand-selection—in each phase, we remove beans that are deemed too small, under-ripe or over-ripe or imperfectly fermented,” notes Toth. The final selection process took three days of inspecting the beans one-by-one and making value judgments on their suitability.

并不是所有的可可豆都符合要求。托特指出：“我們的可可豆要經(jīng)過6道手工挑選程序，在每個階段，我們都會挑出個頭太小、不夠成熟、過于成熟、或者發(fā)酵不夠完美的豆子。”最后一道工序需要花費三天時間，他們要逐個檢查每顆可可豆，對它們是否適合做巧克力進行評價。

Unused beans were returned to the forest floor and now serve as nutrition for the soil or were sold to producers of lower-grade chocolate products. “At production time this year, we actually produced over 900 bars, but roughly one-third of them were found to have blemishes on the surface, so they were separated from the rest and are being used for various tasting and aging experiments,” says Toth. The remaining 574 bars, deemed worthy for packaging, are the only bars we have released to the public.” The goal for 2015’s harvest is to produce just over double that amount, around 1,200, depending on a number of factors including climate.

棄置不用的可可豆會被拿回樹林做肥料，或是賣給其他廠家做稍微低端的巧克力產(chǎn)品。托特表示：“在今年的生產(chǎn)期間，我們實際上生產(chǎn)了900多塊巧克力，但我們發(fā)現(xiàn)其中三分之一表面上有瑕疵，所以我們會把這些挑出來，用做進行各種品嘗或陳化試驗。”剩下的574塊巧克力才是值得包裝的，也是最終投放市場的產(chǎn)品。托特的目標(biāo)是2015年將產(chǎn)量提高一倍，達到1200塊，但這也要取決于包括天氣在內(nèi)的一系列因素。

In addition to the 2015 Rain Harvest release, the team is currently aging a portion of its 2014 harvest. “We are not aging them as bars—rather, we are aging the chocolate mass prior to tempering and formation into bars,” adds Toth. “As with wine, slight and long-term access to oxygen (in a controlled temperature setting) helps soften the tannins of chocolate and rounds out the acidity. In 2015, we will also be releasing about 400 bars of 2014 One-Year Reserve.”

除了推出2015年的雨林巧克力(Rain Harvest)之外，這支團隊目前還在陳化2014年的部分巧克力。托特補充道：“我們不是要把它們陳化成巧克力塊，而是在調(diào)溫和出模之前先將巧克力脂陳化。和釀酒一樣，(在受控的溫度設(shè)置下)少量地長期接觸氧氣，有助于軟化巧克力中的丹寧并減少其中的酸。2015年，我們也將推出大約400塊2014年的1年珍藏巧克力。”

Toth says what makes the beans prized and the chocolate so strong is its complexity and balance, and he thanks the growing region for that. “What I think is special, particularly with our chocolate—and this has a lot to do with terroir of Piedra de Plata—is the wealth of secondary flavor characteristics that evolve from one second to the next,” he says.

托特表示，這種可可豆和巧克力如此珍貴的原因在于它的復(fù)雜性和平衡度，這主要歸功于它的產(chǎn)地。他表示：“我認為這種巧克力的特殊之處是，吃下去后還有豐富變化的后味，這與拉塔河谷的土壤有很大關(guān)系。”

The chocolate’s complexity is partly what makes it such a good candidate for pairings with high-end alcohol like cognac, whiskey and rum. Three, soon to be four, retail locations throughout the U.S. offer tastings.

這種巧克力的復(fù)雜性，使得它與威士忌、干邑白蘭地或朗姆酒等高端酒非常相配。現(xiàn)在你可以在美國的三家零售店品嘗這種巧克力，該公司很快還會增加一家零售店。

Cognac is the best spirit pairing, according to Toth, preferring Kelt XO and Frapin XO as top choices. “Rum is the other definite winner,” he adds. “El Dorado 21 year and El Dorado 15 year are top choices in the rum category.”

據(jù)托特稱，干邑白蘭地是最配這種巧克力的酒，而凱爾特XO和法拉賓XO更是絕配。他補充道：“朗姆酒絕對也是上上之選，劍魚號21年和15年特藏陳年朗姆酒則是首選品牌。”

“If Cognac is the most divine, and rum quite nice, whiskey is the most complex,” he says. “Some whiskies are amazing, others are not. In the realm of Scotch, peaty whiskies, such as Ardbeg, Lagavulin, Bruichladdich do not work—the peatiness overwhelms the chocolate. Very oaky whiskies are also not great. The best Scotch whiskies are whiskies that are aged or finished in sherry casks or port-aged casks. Aberlour is arguably the best. Balvenie 15 year and 21 year (in port wood) is quite interesting.”

他還表示：“如果說干邑是天賜之配，朗姆酒也相當(dāng)不錯，那么威士忌則是最復(fù)雜的，有些威士忌搭配起來令人非常贊嘆，有些則不行。在蘇格蘭威士忌里，阿德貝格、拉加維林和布魯萊迪等泥炭威士忌都不行，橡木威士忌也不是很好。最好的蘇格蘭威士忌是雪莉桶或波特酒桶里窯藏的威士忌。亞伯樂威士忌大概是最好的。百富15年和21年(在波特酒桶里珍藏)就很不錯。”

The best pairing of all, says Toth, is the Pappy Van Winkle. “Not only because of the name, but really, the nuances of both Pappy and of To’ak somehow manage to stand on equal ground,” he explains. “A mouthful of Pappy Van Winkle and To’ak Chocolate is an experience that is worth having, even if only once.”

托特表示，最絕妙的搭配就是派比•范溫克威士忌。他解釋道：“這不僅僅因為這款酒享有的大名，還因為派比•范溫克威士忌和To’ak巧克力的細微之處難分伯仲。品一口派比•范溫克，嘗一口To’ak巧克力，這種感覺絕對值得擁有，哪怕只有一次。”

To’ak Chocolates and pairing are available in Chicago (both Lush Wine & Spirits retail locations), Los Angeles (Wally’s Wine & Spirits), and in the San Francisco Bay Area (Beltramo’s Wine & Spirits in Menlo Park). Individual bars can be purchased on the To’ak website. Each 50 gram bar comes packaged in a wooden box and accompanied by a 116-page booklet that includes an extensive guide to dark chocolate tasting, so not all of your $260 will go down your gullet.

To’ak巧克力和與之搭配的酒品目前在芝加哥、洛杉磯和舊金山灣區(qū)有售。該公司官網(wǎng)也在銷售成品巧克力。每塊50克的巧克力都會搭配一款木盒，以及一本厚達116頁的黑巧克力品鑒指南，也就是說，你并不能把這260美元都吃下肚子。