THE PLAQ METHOD

Everything starts within human-sized cultures, clean and sustainable, all around the world, at the end of the cocoa tree branches. This is where we find cocoa pods - coming from the transformation of the little white flowers. Inside? Cocoa beans. We taste.

Each cocoa pod is hand picked. After having cut its stem with a machete, the pickers open the fruit to harvest the seeds. These cocoa beans are still covered with a sweet and acidic white pulp. It is called mucilage, and will run off and evaporate during the fermentation. We taste.

Cocoa beans are fermented in big wooden vats covered with banana leaves. Regularly mixed, the beans are going to develop their first flavours. 5 to 7 are necessary for them to turn brown and get ready for the next step. We taste.

During 4 to 8 days, depending on the weather, the fermented beans are going to dry under / in the sun. Regularly turned over manually or with a rake, cocoa beans will lose 90% of their humidity. The flavors will slowly come out and concentrate. We taste.

Cocoa beans are placed into gunny sacks to preserve their quality, are carried by boat and by truck. Final destination: our manufacture boutique, rue du Nil in Paris.

You got the idea, tasting is our calling / mission. Also, see, smell, touch, and listen. The five senses are awaking. At PLAQ or onsite, we only chose the best cocoa beans. Sometimes, we are asked how. The answer: the perfect balance between the green of the plant, the acidity of the fermentation and the roundness of the fruit.

Cocoa beans are meticulously sorted, open one’s eye and hand selected / by hand and by eye, meticulously / carefully. Stones / little pebbles and twigs are removed: we only keep the beans. The whole ones. Perfect / flawless.

Beans are slowly heaten up to reveal their flavors. It is this smell that we can smell in the manufacture boutique and up to the end of rue du Nil. The secret? Not too hot, taking the time.

Still warm, the cocoa beans enter the winnower, which breaks them and peels off their shell. We don’t throw anything. The cocoa beans’ shells are used to make some infusions. Cocoa beans, newly bare, became what we call cocoa nibs. We taste.

This step lasts 3 days. The melanger’s granite stones will be grinding the cocoa nibs until we get a smooth bright and dense cocoa paste. We check on / We watch / We monitor. We taste. We also wait. It smells, it heats, it comes.

We add the second ingredient to our chocolate: organic unrefined cane sugar (Native Green Cane label) .Two ingredients happier together, that take the time to meet and become one. They become chocolate. We taste.

Still warm chocolate paste is vacuum packed into blocks. Chocolate matures from two to four weeks on the manufacture-boutique’s shelves. It’s just the time it takes for the molecules to find their place and for the chocolate flavors to develop / to blossom.

The chocolate blocks are melted again, tempered and poured into the molds of different sizes and stamps with our logo. And PLAQ! The noise of one of our chocolate Bar on the counter. We taste.

Each bar is wrapped into a recyclable and biodegradable crystal paper. This is the best way to preserve its taste.

Crunshing. Sharing. Cooking. It's up to you to get the hand on the PLAQ. You taste.