Victoria, for someone who has never heard of Cocoa Beantown, how do you introduce what you do—as a chocolate sommelier and tour founder—and how chocolate tastings became your lens for discovering Boston?
As a professional chocolate sommelier, I am not a chocolatier or chocolate maker, but rather a liaison between the folks who make chocolate products and the consumers who enjoy them. I can curate customized, bespoke craft chocolate tasting events for everyone from private groups looking to celebrate a special occasion, to corporate groups looking for team builders, to ticketed events open to the public for foodie-loving folks looking for a fun evening of learning and new taste experiences. Boston is a hub of innovation, of history, and also of education, and chocolate is a subject matter that naturally provokes enthusiasm for folks. In this way, our Cocoa Beantown events are able to harness this excitement and open the door for people to explore the world of craft chocolate as they socialize, learn new things, explore the city, or find new ways to bond with people.
Your signature walking tours weave through Back Bay and the South End—two neighborhoods that can feel very different. How do you use chocolate stops, local businesses, and stories to reveal the character of each area to visitors?
Every stop on each of our chocolate tours has its own role to play. Even the steps in-between each stop can help tell the story. By hearing about the chocolate treats and desserts folks are trying as we walk through the Back Bay or South End, folks learn about each business and what sorts of community comes through their doors looking for these items. In that way folks get a literal and figurative taste of what the general vibe of a neighborhood might be.
You’ve modelled your tasting method on wine tasting, with origin stories and the “snap and melt” test. Could you walk us through, step by step, how you teach guests to read a piece of chocolate the way they might read a glass of wine—and what that reveals about Boston along the way?
The tasting protocol for craft chocolate is not a method I personally devised, but is utilized by other chocolate sommeliers, chocolate educators, and judges at the International Chocolate Awards and Academy of Chocolate Awards. It is a science-based approached to tasting chocolate that enables the good fat--the cocoa butter--that is part of the chocolate composition, to come to your body temperature, which is close to its melting point, in order to release the full amount of flavor notes contained in the bar. Cacao has over 400 different aromatic flavor profiles potential, so there is a lot to be gained from slowing down and mindfully tasting the chocolate. This is the most essential part of the process. When folks come to a guided tasting event, part of that experience is getting that step by step instruction in a way that makes it easy to connect with the significance behind each part, and how it deepens our experience and appreciation of chocolate.`As Boston is so often the setting of so many of our events (though we have brought our in-person tasting events as far as Hawaii), context matters when tasting, so I always try to weave in aspects of our Boston chocolate history to these programs, or feature some of the folks making bean to bar craft chocolate across Massachusetts today in the curated selections we feature.
From all your years guiding people around the city, what is your personal “perfect chocolate hour” in Boston—time of day, season, and exact spot to stand—for someone who wants to experience both the city and a tasting at their best?
I love spring in Boston. I feel like fall gets a lot of the glory, but we have so many beautiful things to look forward to when those first sunshine-y days pull us out of the cold winter months. One event I look forward to in particular is the magnolia tree bloom on Commonwealth Avenue. It is an event that requires a slow, mindful stroll, with no phones, just eyes aloft, and eating a piece of chocolate while enjoying the beautiful blossoms is definitely worthwhile. Folks should actually keep an eye out this spring for a special Cocoa Beantown collaboration announcement to coincide with this!!
You’ve visited cacao farms, watched indigenous artisans at work, and then guided tours past Boston brownstones. How do you connect those global, often rural origins of cacao with the very urban experience of walking through Boston with a tasting in hand?
No one thinks of the journey chocolate goes through when they hold a piece in their hand. They don't ever think about the fact that it started on a tree, inside a fruit, in a land that is thousands of miles away. As a chocolate sommelier, it is my job to thread together the narrative of the journey of chocolate, in order to bring it to life in the hands of the people who love it. Every time I have traveled to an origin country, I have brought back with me the stories of the farmers, the things I witness on the farms, the people in the local communities that I get to have conversations with. When I host our Cocoa Beantown tasting events or chocolate tours, I utilize my expertise to make these stories come alive for our guests so that while the chocolate may disappear quickly, the lasting impact of the stories they hear will linger long afterward.
Looking ahead, how do you see chocolate-centric experiences evolving in Boston—whether that’s new neighborhoods, formats like virtual tastings, or themes such as sustainability and bean origin—and where do you want Cocoa Beantown to sit in that future landscape?
Cocoa Beantown's goal has always been to utilize the lens of chocolate for greater learning by connecting the natural enthusiasm folks feel for chocolate to other things, such as history, or science, or team-building, or making new friends. When the pandemic happened, we expanded our program offerings to include virtual talks and tastings, as well as outdoor chocolate picnics. In more recent years, we've been offering chocolate tasting singles mingles. As next year is our 10th anniversary in business, we're working on a bunch of new things to celebrate with, including our first ever international trip, where we will be taking folks to Bordeaux, France to experience the rich history, culture, and food & wine scene of that beautiful area, and attending the Showcolat craft chocolate festival.
For a reader planning a trip to Boston who loves chocolate but isn’t sure where to start, what’s one simple tasting ritual or small itinerary you’d suggest that helps them truly discover the city through chocolate rather than just “eating sweets” along the way?
For folks that want a true experience of Boston's chocolate scene with all the history, chocolate expertise, and neighborhood immersion, they should definitely come on one of Cocoa Beantown's public walking tours, or have us plan a private, customized experience for your group. For a great little mini "taste" of an itinerary that would bring you to two neighborhoods, I would tell folks to head to the Lower Mills section of Dorchester, on the banks of the Neponset River, and check out the old Baker's Chocolate Factory building, which was in fact the first chocolate factory in North America, an is currently residences. An original grist wheel dated to 1765 is on display outside the building for folks to view. Then, I would tell them to head to Bittersweet Violet, a whimsical chocolate shop in Boston's South End, and try one of their chocolatier's history-nodding bon bons, like their Great Molasses Flood or Boston Tea Party piece. But that's just a small sampling of what chocolate adventures Boston contains!
Learn more: https://cocoabeantown.com