When the founders of Chandigarh-tricity’s first microbrewery Hops n Grains visited Italy a couple of years ago, they brought along a souvenir that secures their reputation for gifting the city with firsts — this time, a bean-to-bar chocolate outlet called Mozimo Chocolates.
Located in the inner market of the city’s upscale Sector 9, it faces an abstract wall art in burnt orange, muddy brown and faint tones of white and yellow, the colours that also dominate the visual canvas of Mozimo’s interiors and its product packaging.
The welcoming scent of cacao greets me at the entrance, which houses a counter displaying over two dozen varieties of chocolate. The end of the 1,500-square-foot shop, which doubles up as a petite café and a chocolate-making factory, catches my fancy. It’s a glass-walled, 10-foot tall storage room decked with hundreds of nearly-one-foot-long-and-five-inch-thick chocolate blocks.
“There are about 400 blocks, but if you are planning a chocolate heist, drop the idea; each of the blocks weighs 10 kilograms,” says Mozimo’s co-owner Amritanshu Agarwal, directing my curiosity to the facility’s factory and the black staircase which leads us there.
The colour outlines the outlet’s architectural grids and the edges of its furniture that extend to the first floor. The second one has just about enough room for eight imported machines that dish out chocolate from cacao beans, spreads and gelatos from pistachios and hazelnuts. “The devil lies in the details,” quips Priyanka Gupta, Amritanshu and Mozimo’s better half.
As the couple explains the role of these machines in the evolution of a humble, single-origin cacao bean to an artisanal chocolate bar, they are particular about specifications. “We first roast the beans for about 40 minutes at 120 degree Celsius, which are then winnowed and ground. They then go through refining, where they are churned; this is when we add milk and sugar to the mixture before letting it conch for 12 hours in the conch machine. We then let the chocolate age, just like wine,” explains Amritanshu.
The duo sources cacao from Kerala’s GoGround Beans & Spices, which supports small-scale farmers growing high-quality cacao beans.
“Cacao is like wine and has distinct terroir and notes, ranging from fruity to nutty. The beans we source are grown under the shade of banana, jackfruit, coconut and spices. So, our chocolate has notes of berries, spices…” says Priyanka.
Amritanshu monitors the platter of pralines in flavours like hazelnut, cherry-almond, Biscoff and chocolate ganache, handcrafted in different moulds. Glazed with chocolate, the shell bursts and dissolves in the mouth, giving way to the star ingredient’s rich, creamy texture.
On the first floor, aged chocolate blocks meet their fate. A machine warms the 10-kilogram brick to viscous, luscious melted chocolate, ready to be cast into a bar. I try my hand my hand at making a bar too and pat my back for making one with minimal mess. Amritanshu is clearly impressed. “Place it on the vibrating table to release the bubbles; did you see the glossy finish,” he asks before charting out the difference between commercial and artisanal chocolates.
It is not just the sheen that stands out; Mozimo’s chocolates have an almost overpowering, deep taste that compliments the smooth, velvety texture — the darker, the better.
“Since the motivation is profit and the margins are tight, industrial chocolates focus on buying cacao in bulk. The quality of beans takes a backseat. These beans are over-roasted to make the mixture homogeneous; and to mask that bitter flavour, more sugar is added. A bean-to-bar chocolate focusses on enhancing the flavour of the bean. When the chocolate ages, acetic acid is released; it brings out the finer notes of chocolate. This is one of the biggest takeaways from a four-day chocolate-making course in Italy’s north-western area of Piedmont that we attended,” Amritanshu elucidates.
Priyanka elaborates on the extensive research employed for sourcing the beans, fermenting them and taking them to Italy so that she could understand what the brand’s chocolate would taste like. “It took us two years to come up with Mozimo,” she says.
Apart from four variants of chocolates ranging from 45% cacao to 85% cacao, Mozimo offers nuts-and-fruits-infused chocolates, almond, hazelnut and orange dragees coated with chocolate, gelatos, sorbets and spreads — all made from whole, raw ingredients in their factory, which also houses a gelato-making machine.
Says Priyanka, explaining the name: “Mozimo means ‘feeling alive’ in Swahili.”
The brand delivers across India, depending on the weather. Call +91 7087499904 or +91 172404 5414 for details. Chocolates start at ₹240.
Published - July 29, 2024 02:54 pm IST