To celebrate its 150th year of making chocolate, family-owned Guittard Chocolate Company is releasing Eureka Works, a limited-edition chocolate blend formulated for everything from confectionary use to baking applications. Eureka Works is named after the first factory that founder Etienne Guittard opened in San Francisco during the Gold Rush, and the blend evokes the West Coast flavor profile of that time. Before the Panama Canal was built, there was a distinct taste difference between East Coast and West Coast chocolate based on the cacao varieties regional chocolate makers were able to source. Gary Guittard, fourth generation CEO and chocolate maker, was inspired by Etienne’s recipe books and a vintage ad showing Guittard’s early cocoa sourcing map to recreate the original West Coast flavor profile with a blend from like-minded cocoa growers in Ecuador, Indonesia, Hawaii and Brazil.
Eureka Works also reflects Guittard’s ongoing leadership in sustainable cocoa sourcing and stewardship. The company sources fine flavor cacao from cocoa-growing regions around the world, showcasing the flavors unique to each country through their roasting and blending expertise. For every Eureka Works bar sold, 5% of the proceeds will go to the Heirloom Cacao Preservation Fund to support its work promoting the preservation of fine flavor cacao. According to Gary Guittard, “Everyone who purchases the Eureka Works bar will get a taste of Guittard’s history and help ensure the preservation of heirloom cacao for the next 150 years.”
Eureka Works 62% is a complex, chocolate blend reflecting the Pacific trade routes that led to San Francisco bringing the beans Etienne would have sourced. As an inspirational early 20th century Guittard ad cited, “…the aromatic cocoa of the Indies. Richly colored, fine, full beans from Samoa in the South Seas. Mellow, deeply flavored beans from the Tropical Americas.”
Ecuador: The largest producer of cocoa at the turn of the century, Ecuador is still home to the Arriba, or Nacional, variety of cocoa. Renowned for its aroma and complexity, this historic cocoa variety is grown by the organic-certified Sabor Arriba cooperative in Esmeraldas, Northern Ecuador.
Indonesia: Cacao first arrived in Indonesia in the 1600s, and today the country is the third-largest cocoa producer in the world. This aromatic cocoa comes from East Java where the Dutch established plantations in the mid 1600s. Guittard is partnering with the Indonesian Coffee & Cocoa Research Institute (CCRI) to help them rediscover the unique, historic flavors of this diverse island nation.
Hawaii: To recreate the flavors of the beans Guittard once sourced from Samoa, they turned to Hawaii⎯the only region in the U.S. that grows cocoa. Its new, award-winning cacao industry has bolstered farms like Waialua Estate on the north shore of Oahu, where these beans were grown. Since 2005, Guittard has worked closely with the farm on post-harvest techniques that bring out the full flavor of this unique cacao.
Brazil: The Brazilian cacao industry changed drastically in 1989 when disease wiped out nearly all of the country’s cocoa plantations. Cocoa sourced for this chocolate comes from the Fazenda Camboa farm, in the heart of the Bahia growing region, where the third generation of the Carvalho family has worked to restore this plantation to its former glory.
Collection Etienne Eureka Works 62% Bittersweet Chocolate ($29.95 / 500-gram bar in gift box) is available exclusively at Guittard.com. Find tasting notes, recipes, and a list of chefs and restaurants creating desserts with Eureka Works at Guittard.com/150.
About Guittard Chocolate Company:
Guittard Chocolate Company’s 150 year-progression from manufacturer and merchant during the Gold Rush in San Francisco to its position today as a chocolate industry leader and innovator serves as a snapshot of California food and commerce history. As the oldest continuously family-owned and operated chocolate company in the United States, Guittard, now under the fourth and fifth generation of family management, continues to grow with the same innovative spirit and commitment to sustainability and quality that has made it one of the world’s most respected makers of premium chocolate.
About the Heirloom Cacao Preservation Fund (HCP):
The best chocolate in the world starts with the finest cacao, but that cacao is poised for extinction. As the industry continues to replace fine flavor cacao trees with bland hybrids and clones, a world of boring monochromatic chocolate dominates. The HCP (hcpcacao.org) seeks to protect, preserve, and propagate the finest, richest, most complex forms in the chocolate universe for future generations. Launched by the Fine Chocolate Industry Association (FCIA) in 2012, the HCP offers a new way to find these diamonds of cacao by connecting their flavor traits to their genetics, rewarding their growers with higher premiums, and working with world’s foremost flavor experts and geneticists to identify and save Heirloom cacao from extinction.
