How India’s Craft Chocolate Makers Are Innovating with Local Flavours

Belgium is not a cacao-growing country. Yet, it has come to be associated with the very origins of the chocolate bar. The country has produced and exported bars from the early 1900s. It has also given the world the crunchy praline, and the delicate ballotin. To use the term ‘Belgian chocolate’ the bean thought imported needs to have undergone the various stages of processing in the country. 

Cacao is a native of South America and first arrived in India in the 20^th century. Cacao is also not embedded in our culture. We produce less than one per cent of the world’s cacao with minimal exports. Kerala once led the charge of Indian cacao, but as per reports from 2022, Andhra Pradesh has emerged as the largest cacao growing region in India. While trends of craft and luxury brands mirror those of chocolate making in Belgium, Switzerland, and USA, the Indian craft chocolate movement (if one can call it that), is distinctive. 

How then does a craft chocolate brand define ‘Indian’? “We asked ourselves, are we going to make chocolate as the Belgians do in pralines and bonbons? Or like the Americans in bars or the French by baking with it, or like the Swiss by adding high-quality milk into it? What would be the Indian way to make chocolate?” says Chaitanya Muppala, founder of Hyderabad-based Manam Chocolate. It is a question luxury chocolate makers grapple with and often find answers to through the produce, terroir and sometimes, culture that surrounds them. 

The Indian craft chocolate market, though small and made up of only a handful of brands, is barely new. For over a decade now, chocolate makers from different parts of the country have been putting the humble Indian (chocolate) bean front and centre to produce a luxury range of bars, tablets, bonbons, pralines, bakes, and hot chocolate. They are competing for a small set of discerning Indian consumers, establishing their niche and winning big world chocolate awards.

From a heritage building in Mysore to the gently rolling hills of Mahabaleshwar, the shores of Chennai, and small-town Coimbatore, these chocolate makers are everywhere and new brands are added to the gamut yearly. While at it, they are educating customers about the Indian bean and the process behind the making of these luxury bars.

More recently, a distinct trend that has emerged in the craft chocolate market, is the use of local and Indian flavours. Some comforting, some experimental, and some rather bizarre. Chocolate expert and founder of Chennai-based Kocoatrait, Nitin Chordia who has been at the forefront of the craft chocolate movement, tells us that making this distinction is essential. “There are Indian flavours like the quintessential masala chai, and then there are local flavours. For instance, a chocolate maker may be growing their rosemary and using it to flavour chocolate. While the flavour profile may not be distinctly Indian, it is local,” he says.

Looking through the websites of these artisanal brands, you’ll find everything, from thandai to kulfi, chocolates coating local capers and flavoured with curry leaf, all the way to chocolate topped with the molaga podi (Tamil spice powder). They are sweet, savoury, and sometimes spicy like Kocoatrait’s own Mor Milagai or Coimbatore-based Soklet’s bar that uses the bitingly spicy bhoot jolokia chillies. That’s not all, craft chocolate brands have often partnered with other luxury artisanal brands to produce one-of-a-kind bars. Kochi-based Paul and Mike used Mumbai-based cheese maker Eleftheria’s award-winning Norwegian cheese Brunost in a chocolate bar, and Mysore-based Naviluna has in the past used artisanal Blue Tokai coffee in one of theirs. 

This cross-pollination of artisanal brands is only one way in which flavours are developed, according to Vikas Temani, co-founder, Paul and Mike. “Inspiration can come from all quarters. While the Brunost bar was inspired by a similar one created by a Norwegian chocolate company, others could be market-driven or come from a conversation with the team,” he says. “The process is experimental. You try 10 things, and usually one is successful. There is a constant churning,” he adds. 

The Indian

Paul and Mike has a range of Indian flavours to suit all kinds of palates. These varieties witness a spike in sales around festive seasons especially in gift boxes. There is also a collection dedicated to Indian fruits. Think jamun, sitaphal, Alphonso mango and golden berry. Sitaphal, Temani admits, is among their highest selling. 

At Kocoatrait, the Madras Collection with nine variants, features hyper-local favourites like panakkam (a sweet, spiced welcome drink), kozhukattai (sweet festive dumplings), malligai (Madurai jasmine), and filter coffee, among others. The flavours are distinct, wrapped in smooth, fine chocolate, and nostalgic while also staying true to their craft philosophy. It’s hardly surprising when Chordia tells us, they are a favourite among NRIs visiting during the December music season. 

Mumbai-based Subko Cacao’s milk chocolate topped with molaga podi, Mahabaleshwar-based Ziaho chocolate’s dark milk mango and chilli, and Hyderabad-based Manam Chocolate’s curry leaf and coconut bonbons, are all part of this enduring trend of spotlighting produce and flavours from the Indian subcontinent. 

The Local

Kocoatrait’s jasmine is sourced from Chennai, not far away from the brand’s office space. Ziaho’s strawberries and mulberries in their three-berry bar, are sourced locally from Mahabaleshwar. Several other examples range from the local to the Indian. For instance, Subko Cacao’s Sea buckthorn meringue pie, inspired by the classic lemon meringue pie, uses native Himalayan berries foraged as part of India Roots, a collaboration project with well-known chef Prateek Sadhu. 

Not all produce makes it to the bar (or the bonbon) at the bean stage. Some are used for fermentation and texture of the fruit. Manam Chocolate uses native mango ginger (a variety of turmeric) to produce its 60 per cent dark bar, through a process they call ‘creative fermentation’. Then there’s the Chakkarakeli banana, native to the West Godavari region, and a personal favourite of founder Chaitanya Muppala which is used during fermentation, too. “It doesn’t mean it tastes like a banana, but gives you a new complexity,” he says. 

The Great Indian Cacao

The Indian cacao bean, Chordia tells us, can be challenging. “India grows four or five genetic varieties that are on the bitter side. They are inherently bitter varieties. The other challenges at the processing stage are the acidity and the non-development of flavour. You are limited by what you can do with it,” he says. “The Indian cocoa bean has not been worked on enough. Post-harvest at the fermentation level, farmers don’t know enough. Drying is also an art that most people ignore,” he adds.

Muppala gives us a lesson in agricultural history to put it into perspective. “Cacao came to India in recent history, in the 1960s for commercial production. It was brought here by industrial players for industrial purposes. They brought with them a genetically engineered crop suitable for industrial production. They are optimised for productivity, not flavour,” he explains, adding that in the end, the chocolate is only as good as the bean. He also tells us that commodity cacao makes mass-produced chocolate deriving fat from the bean and flavour from additives. Complexity comes with fine cacao. It is also why Muppala rejects the bean-to-bar label, saying, ‘Our work begins at the fruit level’. This, while Muppala is also working towards bringing genetically finer varieties to the subcontinent. 

He asked himself, what makes for Indian chocolate? And the answer lay in his childhood memories of the black forest cake from the neighbourhood bakery and the popular chocolate ice cream cone, Cornetto. “We’ve tried to deconstruct and reconstruct these memories of chocolate without being reductionist,” he says.

Manali Khandelwal, director of Subko Cacao, has a similar approach to deconstruction and reconstruction of the familiar and nostalgic wrapped in fine ingredients and technique. Some bars are reminiscent of popular chocolate brands like Twix and Reeses, except they are made in-house with traceable, often geo-tagged local ingredients. 

In line with their coffee philosophy, Khandelwal wants to make the bean shine through with its unique terroir. Flavour development, as such, isn’t straightforward. Every batch isn’t the same and must be treated as such. Here is where Terroir, a range of micro lot chocolate comes in. Common with coffee, it allows her to roast and conch every batch as new and distinct. “We use each batch for what it has to offer”, she says. 

Terroir also defines Ziaho Chocolate’s approach to flavours. Co-founder Karan Tejani scoured the country for ingredients that could be used to flavour chocolate. An apple-cinnamon flavoured bar, and another one inspired by the popular coconut pineapple cocktail Pina Colada, are some of the results. Tejani believes that the bitterness and astringency that comes with Indian cacao is a test of the maker’s mettle. “It is our job as chocolate makers to balance them well, so they aren’t unpleasant. It all begins at the farm level with fermentations. Roasting is also essential. Conching is also very critical. It improves the viscosity of the chocolate. If you conch too far, it loses nuance. It’s a delicate dance between art and science,” he says. 

The Thing About Ratios

While chocolate makers may not always be able to control the quality or the processing of the bean that comes to them, they work around the many other factors which are in their control. “At the end of the day, I need to create the best version of what my chocolate can be,” he says.

For flavour development, chocolate makers have to choose the right ratio and variant of chocolate, too. While Subko Cacao chose white chocolate for its popular Kulfi bar, Ziaho went with 70 per cent dark chocolate to showcase the tartness of strawberries and mulberries. “If it’s too bitter, I would try a dark milk variant. Almonds could bring a nutty flavour and take away some of the bitterness,” Tejani explains. 

Khandelwal was initially sceptical about the use of molaga podi in chocolate until she found the right variant. “It didn’t work as well with dark or white chocolate, but paired beautifully with milk chocolate,” she recalls. 

Producing flavoured chocolate involves a series of intricate decisions from process to form. And yet there is no stopping Indian craft chocolate makers. Ziaho’s packaging introduces the ‘hero ingredient’ on the outer cover of every bar, in the language native to its origin. Paul and Mike, is experimenting with cashews, pepper, and coconut next. 

Do flavoured bars sell better? Khandelwal tells us that the answer to this question is both yes and no. “If you are an Indian chocolate maker you would want to highlight Indian flavours. Some like the kulfi bar are an easy sell, not so much the podi chocolate because the combination seems unfamiliar, at first. There is the low-hanging fruit, and there is stuff we want to talk about and put out there as unique offerings. It’s a delicate balance,” she says. Tejani believes that chocolate consumers can have polar choices and exist on two ends of the spectrum. “Either they want something familiar, or something that surprises them. There is no middle ground,” he explains. 

With Kocoatrait, Chordia’s sales of the masala chai and filter coffee bars, outweigh the others by a large margin. “As much as 30 per cent of sales come from these two in comparison with all the others from the Madras collection clubbed together,” he says. Despite that Chordia believes this approach to flavours is short-lived. “As a chocolate maker, you are driven by the market. And you believe, that unless you have many flavours, you can’t cater to everyone. People will realise over time that it is not viable,” he says.