Shokan, NY
Located in Shokan, New York, Fruition Chocolate opened in 2011 and has made a name for itself since the beginning. Bryan was named two years later “Top 10 Chocolatiers” by Dessert Professional Magazine and the same year Fruition Chocolate earned their first Good Food Award. In 2016, they won Best in Competition at the International Chocolate Awards for their Maranon Dark Milk,
“My husband always says, ‘we don’t put beans in one end and out spits chocolate, there is a hand in every step of the process.’ We’re seeing, tasting, smelling, and adjusting, it is all part of the craft,” Dahlia, wife of Bryan Graham, founder of Fruition Chocolate Works and Confectionary, explained about their process.
“That was kind of like the Oscars of chocolate.”
Fruition Chocolate’s handcrafted, small batch “bean to bar” chocolate isn’t your average chocolate bar.
“In reality, all chocolate is bean to bar, but we know which beans go in which bar.”
In the beginning, Dahlia and Bryan spent a lot of time visiting places that grow cacao beans. They’ve been to Peru, Costa Rica, and Belize. They have seen many cacao farms but not necessarily the ones they source from currently. Instead, they work with groups like Uncommon Cacao who make a point to source ethically and who have people on the ground publishing transparency reports and telling stories of the farmers.
When Dahlia and Bryan started their business 7 years ago there were roughly 12 chocolate makers, making chocolate from bean to bar in the United States that they knew about. Today there is a running list of over 200 companies in the US. Not only hoping to be the next craft beer wave, but they are also hoping that the growing craft chocolate movement will push the bigger players to be more socially conscious. When chocolate makers source cacao that is organically grown and ethically traded, they are paying above market price to farmers.
In general, craft chocolate makers seem to be more socially conscious than the mass quantity chocolate market. What they work to do is seek out high-quality cacao, making sure the standards are higher at every level. From farmers pay, to sustainability initiatives, and to the way the cacao is grown, fermented, and dried.
In the past, these farmers would sell all the beans from their trees on the bulk commodity market at a low price which would then be purchased by larger chocolate companies. Today, there is a market of people who are willing to pay a higher price for higher quality, fine flavor cacao. This gives farmers the opportunity to separate trees with special genetics or make sure they have a higher quality product.
Fruition released two new origins this past fall, a 74% dark Madagascar cacao from the Sambirano region and an 85% dark Columbia cacao from the Tumaco region. The Tumaco region has been plagued by narco trafficking coming from the coca leaf farmers there. The small batch draft chocolate movement is trying to pay farmers a high enough price for cocoa beans so they can sell cacao instead of coca providing them with a livelihood that is not involved in the drug trade.
“It is a problem that’s bigger than we’re going to solve on our own, but collectively with the craft chocolate marketplace growing we can influence a particular community on the ground.”
While we were visiting, Fruition had cacao beans from Madagascar, Dominican Republic, Bolivia, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Nicaragua. They source from different regions within these areas because similar to wine and coffee, there is terroir with cacao, so depending on the type of climate the cacao is grown in, what conditions, and what other crops are grown nearby, will influence how the cacao tastes.
Arguably the most important, sourcing is only one step in their process. The cacao seeds are extracted from cacao pods, covered, fermented for up to about a week, and then dried in the sun. What they call cacao beans, at this point, are then shipped and delivered to their facility in Shokan where their first step is roasting. After the cacao beans are roasted, this is when they are called cocoa beans.
The beans are then hand sorted and the whole beans are put into a hopper which cracks the shell off of the nib sorting the nibs out from the shell. The nibs are what goes in to make chocolate. The nibs then get ground between two stone wheels in the pre-refining process, which breaks down the nib a little bit before putting it into a grinder.
Their Maranon Dark Milk chocolate most recently won a Good Food Award for 2017 as well as Gold in the International Chocolate Awards in 2015 and 2016. The Maranon cocoa beans are a rare genetic variety of cacao found in a remote region of Peru. It is considered a dark milk chocolate, with 68% from the cocoa bean. Their signature dark chocolate, Hispaniola, ironically has the same percentage of cocoa beans, but made without any milk, tastes remarkably different. The cacao also comes from a different origin, demonstrating that the percentage alone does not speak to the taste of the chocolate… all the more reason to visit their flagship location and try them for yourself.
Fruition’s Brown Butter Milk bar is their rendition on a classic milk chocolate, which uses milk from Ronnybrook Farm Dairy in Pine Planes, New York. It is made with browned butter which gives it a caramel flavor. They also have a white chocolate bar called Vanilla Bean Toasted White. It has whole vanilla bean ground in and the milk powder is toasted to give it a dulce de leche kind of flavor. Many people who say they don’t like white chocolate tend to like Fruition’s because they don’t make it sickly sweet like many other white chocolates found on the market.
As well as having limited-edition in-house products at their Shokan location, Fruition Chocolate also carries many different local products that they know and love. Their chocolates are carried in over 250 different stores across the country. Some of the local stores that carry their products include Adams, Bread Alone, Cheese Louise, and Duo Pantry.
Fruition’s satellite location in Woodstock, New York, carries a line of curated craft chocolates from both national and international chocolate makers. Dahlia looks at other products in the market and selects items that bring in something different than what Fruition has. This not only supports their fellow craft chocolate makers but it helps to broaden the selection available to customers.
Three years before Fruition Chocolate and Confectionary was established, Bryan and Dahlia got married. By the following summer, they ended up traveling for five months across the country visiting friends and family. They ultimately ended up in New Zealand for two months backpacking and seeing the countryside. This trip was more or less when Fruition Chocolate Works and Confectionery came to fruition. At the time Dahlia and Bryan were keeping a list of pros and cons for what cities would be best to start their business. However, by the time the couple got back to the Hudson Valley, they realized there was no better place to start than where they were. The longer they stayed, the more rooted they became in the community and the evolving Hudson Valley food scene.
Many of their closest friends are other chocolate makers, who most might think would be their biggest competition, but they don’t quite see it that way.
“We look at is as the rising tide raises all ships and that as an industry we are helping each other to move the industry forward, as opposed to head on competition”
This past year Fruition Chocolate Works and Confectionery expanded within their Shokan location, with newer equipment, fresh packaging, a larger capacity for their hand-crafted treats, and a beautiful viewing window to see all the chocolatiers at work. Dahlia and Bryan always say they would like to grow as big as they can without sacrificing quality, they hope to continue to expand, but never at the expense of their people.
Location: 3091 Route 28 Shokan, NY 12481 (Tasting Room & Factory Store)
17 Tinker St. Woodstock, NY 12498 (Woodstock Boutique)
Contact: (845) 657-6717
Click here to visit Fruition Chocolate’s website