At Chocolate Naive the production cycle starts with thinking about why the recipe is important and how it adds value to the craft chocolate industry.
To me, chocolate-making is a slow and meditative process with a lot of planning and calibrating before I even try to attempt the first cacao bean test roast. I look closely at the raw materials in order to understand its hidden nuances and bring the best out of it. Quite often, I struggle for months to extract the optimal flavour and aromatic properties. Only well-balanced products deserve to be released.
It has been seven years since I started and I have been able to amass a little bit of chocolate production knowledge during this time. It has been a long and often painful journey but the research and development process was certainly necessary. I believe we are quite technical. I like to deconstruct the chocolate-making process and apply best practices from tradition, but also to innovate.
About 80 per cent of the machinery used in our lab is either custom engineered or refurbished antique items. I do not follow trends and unverified manufacturing ideas. I like to use orthodox knowledge first and then tweak it a little bit. In my humble opinion, the craft chocolate industry is in its infancy and small producers need to do more research before they release products into the market.
My chocolate lab is rather small and it has two people running it − me and my production assistant. Our highly efficient process helps us to remain hands-on but also enables us to produce over 5 tons of chocolate per year.
Domantas Uzpalis,
chocolatier
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