There is much more to chocolate than chocolate

Chocolate is important. Normally this space is reserved for federal politics or "weighty" issues, but chocolate is a weighty issue (ba-boom, pun, move on) and unlike Australia's growing debt stasis, the news on chocolate in Australia is positive. I bear good news.

As the growth of the global middle class has exploded, consumption of chocolate has exploded in step, to the point where the supply chain for cocoa is becoming more vulnerable. After chocolate prices spiked 25 per cent last year, the world's largest chocolate maker, Barry Callebaut of Switzerland (it provides raw material, not its own brands), warned of a pending structural chocolate shortage.

Illustration: michaelmucci.com

If a major natural disaster, or disease, or civil war, or all of the above, were to happen in the world's cocoa hub of west Africa, chocolate would truly become a luxury item.

Given that the Ebola disease has already ravaged parts of west Africa and brushed the dominant cocoa producers, Ivory Coast and Ghana, and given that there are civil wars nearby, the world cocoa supply is vulnerable in the midst of boom.

The price of cocoa beans has increased 60 per cent in the past three years, a clear indicator of supply tensions. Even without disasters, disease, corruption and climate change, cocoa harvesting is labor-intensive, and that is not going to change.

Now to Australia, and good news. Last October, I made a pilgrimage back to Bruges, where more superfine chocolate is produced, and sold, than any in other city in the world, per capita. It is a beautiful city and I have a couple of buddies in Belgium, which makes everything easier. We went to Bruges, then Ghent, equally beautiful, and equally endowed with chocolatiers of the highest quality.

What delighted me was that I did not taste any chocolates that exceeded the quality of Australian-made chocolates I had discovered before going to Europe. Superfine chocolates made in Melbourne. A friend had taken me to afternoon tea at Koko Black, at the Paris end of Collins Street. I'd never heard of it, but it is clearly beloved because Melbourne has seven Koko Black café stores.

It was the first time I had ever tasted locally made chocolate as good as the superfine chocolates I have long loved from Switzerland (Teuscher's champagne truffle is my gold standard) and in Belgium made by Neuhaus, Caller, and others all better than Godiva.

When I brought Koko Black home to my wife I briefly attained demi-god status. The arrival of superfine chocolate production in Australia was another marker of cultural evolution. I used to marvel at the routinely high quality of food in France, Italy and Spain, in contrast to what was available in Australia, but those days are gone. Australia has moved with tremendous speed out of provincialism.

Now Australia is making world-class chocolate, thanks to Shane Hills, 42, married with two young kids, who grew up in Tasmania.

On March 25, give or take a day, Koko Black will launch in Sydney, 12 years after the first store opened in the Royal Arcade on Little Collins St in 2003.

Like me, Shane had made a chocolate pilgrimage to Bruges. He went to find a Belgian chocolatier to make superfine chocolate in Australia. He found his man, Dries Cnockaert. "He was very talented and he was looking for adventure. It was the perfect match."

The Belgian master has since returned to Bruges, replaced by other overseas and locally-trained chocolatiers, but he provided the skill and the training that established the quality on which Koko Black rests.

Dries Cnockaert, I salute you.

There are 12 Koko Black stores in Australia, plus one in Queenstown, New Zealand. The Sydney stores will bring the total to 15, one in the Strand Arcade, facing the Pitt Street Mall, and the other in a small booth in the Queen Victoria Building.

I learned all this because after returning from Bruges I emailed Koko Black and made contact with the founder. I asked when he was going to bring Koko to Sydney. "Funny you should ask that," he replied. We have since met in Sydney and Melbourne.

Shane waited a long time because he had to have the right location. So did Haigh's, which celebrates its centenary this year, and took 90 years before it expanded into Sydney from Adelaide.

Australia's two most beloved chocolate makers both chose the Strand Arcade. Haigh's and Koko Black will now go head-to-head from opposite ends of the Strand and opposite ends of the QVB.

I was delighted when Haigh's belatedly came to Sydney, but Koko Black is clearly a step up. It makes superfine chocolate, self-evidently European. Haigh's does not. Koko Black is more expensive than Haigh's, because it is a more luxurious product, and Haigh's is already expensive.

What made Shane Hills really interesting was not just his passion to create superfine chocolate in Australia, but his ambition to create a vertically integrated operation in which the cocoa farmer is treated with much greater fairness than under the mainstream cocoa trade.

"The farmer is at a massive disadvantage under the present system," he told me. "We think we can create a model which really makes a difference. Starting in 2016, we are going to make our own chocolate, from the bean. We will source them from growers' co-operatives. We want to take the product every step from the cocoa bean to the consumer."

He is looking at potential cocoa sources in Central America, Asia and Papua New Guinea, away from the vulnerabilities of Africa and closer to home. He has already created 400 jobs in Australia.

This should be the face of modern capitalism. There is much more to chocolate than chocolate.

Twitter: @Paul_Sheehan_