Take a walk on the wild side, with Hachez’s Wild Cocoa de Amazones bars. Photography by Hannah Kaminsky | THE NIBBLE.
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PETER ROT is the THE NIBBLE’s chocolate specialist.
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October 2009
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Hachez Chocolate
Page 1: The Hachez Style
CAPSULE REPORT: Established in 1890 in Bremen, Germany, Hachez produces chocolates based on original recipes of founder Joseph Emile Hachez, a Belgian chocolatier. Joseph Hachez chose Ecuadorian cacao beans for his chocolate. As far back as the 17th century, Ecuador had a reputation as a leading growing region for top cacao beans, and the company is still committed to that varietal. Ecuadorian cacao, called Nacional or Arriba is typically subtle and light on the palate, but the body is heavy and bold. Read more about it in our guide to Single Origin Chocolate Regions. This is Page 1 of a two-page article. Click on the black link below to visit Page 2.
Overview: Hachez Style
Hachez has always been a name synonymous with supreme texture and mild flavor. It’s a soft style of chocolate that takes the edge off of an otherwise serious German penchant for strongly-flavored foods (think sauerkraut and sausages). Although the flavor is usually mild and subtle, lurking almost tepidly in the background, the unctuous texture melts sensually in the fore and coats the tongue with such grace that not even connoisseur brands such as Valrhona or Domori can come close.
With such depth as 77% and 88% cacao, Hachez’s two premier dark chocolates may seem intimidating. But rest assured, they are mild for their class and can almost certainly be enjoyed by anyone who enjoys the 70% cacao range and even semisweet chocolate. As a matter of fact, if you're wary about wading through the upper 70s- and 80s-class chocolates, Hachez is an excellent place to start. The high cocoa butter will not only temper your taste buds to the lower sugar content, but will also allow you to appreciate the interplay of flavors that occurs at these levels of cocoa content.
The reason Hachez bars have mild flavors and such superior texture is simple: The recipe contains more cocoa butter. A typical Hachez bar contains 5g more cocoa butter per serving than other brands (the norm is 17g). More cocoa butter, however, means less room for cocoa particles,* and because Hachez has already adjusted for the sugar, the finished bar will taste mild, yet melt superbly on the tongue. That’s why people who never venture beyond 70% can enjoy the 77% and 88% bars without trepidation.
*Cocoa mass, and therefore cocoa content, can be separated into two components: cocoa butter and cocoa particles. Cocoa particles are what’s separated from the butter in a press to produce cocoa powder. This is actually what gives chocolate its flavor. A chocolate bar’s cocoa content actually refers to its combined weight of cocoa butter and cocoa particles since stricter regulations do not exist to further break down the ratio. |
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 Hachez’s Wild Cocoa de Amazonas 45% milk chocolate: ultra-creamy. |
In sum, Hachez is a style unlike any other. Sure, there are plenty of chocolate bars from other makers that are shot full of cocoa butter, but they usually lack complexity of flavor. Even if a Hachez bar is mild, it still delivers a boat load of complexity that is noticeably present (though it always rides backseat to the texture). In other words, Hachez has found a delicate balance between bean and butter, and consistently produces flavor time and time again.
Is Hachez your bar?
- Anyone who appreciates fruitiness in their chocolate, and also likes the mildness, would certainly find a home in Hachez, along with those who are new to fine chocolate—since Hachez can bridge the gap between middle- and top-tier brands.
- The first top-tier brand that comes to mind when tasting Hachez is Valrhona, since chocolates of that brand tend to be complex, smooth and infused with a relaxing quality that beckons to Hachez in some ways.
- Fans of the Lindt Excellence series need not apply here, since those bars are fairly assertive.
Continue To Page 2: Hachez Wild Cocoa de Amazones Bars
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