Fresh and local... even from halfway around the world

On the eastern edge of Ashland, Oregon, just north of the California state line, Dagoba Chocolates makes some of the most exquisite chocolate products on the planet. And while they don't grow the cacao pods in the nearby towns of Talent or Hilt, they hew very strongly to one of the core virtues of the fresh and local philosophy: sustainability.

We stopped at Dagoba on a hot August day, and Kim & Charlie preceded me into the cool tasting room:



Sadly, no factory tours were available, due to FDA regulations (their factory has no separation between the tourists and the chocolate vats). But we were able to console ourselves with tastings, and with an interesting display of cacao pods and beans in the raw:



Dagoba (and it's pronounced da-GO-ba, from the Sanskrit word for "temple"—NOT to be confused with a certain swamp planet in a galaxy far, far away) has a fairly comprehensive line of chocolates, including various powdered cocoa products as well as confectionery bars. The bars are available for tasting, on two separate tables; I'll describe each individually.

The first table contains a selection of chocolate bars with different flavors, including several straight-up dark chocolates. We ended up buying the Conacado, a 73% chocolate from cacao sourced in the Dominican Republic. Rich, bittersweet and deep, it's a good choice for anyone familiar with the better-quality chocolates from Sarotti and Valrhona.

We also picked up a bar of Latte, a milk chocolate with ground coffee and cinnamon, Charlie's favorite combination ever since he discovered Mexican chocolate (which includes ground cinnamon). This one's creamy, with the warm spice of cinnamon and the faint bitterness of coffee, an excellent treat.

Another classic combination is their mint, dark chocolate with mint and a hint of rosemary. Rosemary? Yes, and the choice of this evergreen herb is wonderful with dark chocolate and the bright, wintery zing of mint. Even better to our palates was the Lavender: dark chocolate with lavender and blueberries. The flowery fragrance of lavender on top of the slightly tart blueberry undertaste makes this exotic and luscious. There were more chocolates to choose from, but we turned our attention to the other tasting table for something more subtle.

That subtlety: varietal chocolates, from Peru, Ecuador, Costa Rica, and Madagascar. We especially liked the Madagascar, an intensely flavored dark chocolate (65%) with a strong mineral backbone (as they say in wine circles), earthy and robust with hints of citrus. We also came home with the Ecuador Arriba, a more flowery chocolate but still with the strong astringency that real dark-chocolate lovers crave. I was also fond of the Costa Rican Cru Trinitario (68% cocoa), with elements of golden raisins and hazelnuts in the finish.

But one of my favorite things about Dagoba chocolate is that they are 100% organic and fair-trade, which has two benefits. First: for those who have been disturbed by the growing outrage over the use of slave labor in the production of West African chocolate (page will open in new window), Dagoba's organic certification means that the cacao beans were grown and harvested without slave labor. Additionally, since slavery is still used in western Africa, Dagoba's use of Central and South American chocolates (plus some Madagascar beans) avoids the issue entirely.

And second: their organic methods really break into the new buzzword of "sustainability." The model of sustainability focuses on a type of agriculture which puts back nutrients into the soil, avoids pollution of water sources, and reduces the negative impact on the ecosystem in which the agriculture takes place. For Dagoba, this means that the cacao trees grow in their natural habitat (like shade-grown coffee), not in clearcut plantations. This means that the cacao farms retain the native plants used as nesting and food sources for migratory songbirds and other rain-forest animals. In short... this chocolate may be brown, but in its heart it's green.

Best of all is the story from Madagascar, one of the world's most fragile ecosystems. Biodiversity in and around the cacao farms is actually increasing, rather than decreasing, since Dagoba has started contracting for cacao pods from the Sambirano region. Given that 80% of Madagascar's species live nowhere else on earth, the news that sustainable cacao farming is restoring and preserving these subtropical forests is very encouraging.

But at the end of the day, intellectual arguments over fair trade and sustainability fade in comparison to Dagoba's real strength: the chocolate is just superb. Whether it's the unsweetened powdered cocoa (which we've been using in mochas now that the school year has resumed) or the exquisite bars of chocolate, Dagoba deserves the attention of serious chocolate lovers anywhere.

As part of a feature I'm writing about day tours in the Oregon wine country, I had the great pleasure of visiting the Carlton Winemakers Studio yesterday. Part of that great pleasure is immediately apparent from this photo of the Studio from a nearby hillside:



I was intrigued by the idea of the Studio recently when I was seated next to its founder, Eric Hamacher, at a dinner for the Oregon Chardonnay Alliance. Eric had brought his own chardonnay, produced at the Studio under his own label, and we were much taken with it. (I'm working on a separate article on that dinner, and on Eric's intensely passionate take on chardonnay.)

The idea of the Winemakers Studio is fairly simple: Construct a location where small winemakers could share resources (space, fermentation vats, bottling facilities, the all-important forklift for carrying cases of wine to be shipped, etc.) and allow them to take their wines to the next level without the huge investment in property and equipment normally required. As a result, ten wineries participate in the Carlton Winemakers Studio to make wine in their own personal style. And best of all from the enophile's standpoint, they're all available in the same tasting room, with some inventive and creative ways of presenting them.

I arrived midafternoon on a warm August day, and was delighted to find a very modern, cool tasting room just in from a pleasant sheltered patio. How tasting works here: on any given day, the tasting room has a selection of wines from among the members' available vintages; their house wines (that is, wine produced under the Carlton Winemakers Studio label) are always complimentary, and there are modest tasting fees associated with the other offerings of the day.

The way to get the best results here is to go with one of the flights they offer. The principle is simple: take two or three wines of some similar characteristics, serve a small amount of each, and let the taster compare and contrast them. The flights vary, of course, from day to day depending on what's open; on my visit there was a flight of white and rose wines, another of "miscellaneous reds" (about which more later), and the one that caught my eye, pinot noirs. For $10 I was treated to a generous splash from each of three different pinots produced at the Studio: their house pinot ($18), made by Eric Hamacher for the Carlton Winemakers Studio label; a J. Daan ($22), described by the young woman who poured as her personal favorite; and a Boedecker ($28).

My take on the tasting is that the Studio's house wine is one of the most salmon-friendly pinots I've had recently, light enough not to overpower a grilled slab of Copper River sockeye but with enough complexity and range to be good with other white meats—it would have been just fine, for example, with the pan-roasted pork tenderloin with cipolline onions and fresh sage that I made for Father's Day this year (and considering that I splurged on an Argyle Nut House pinot for that dinner, this is quite a compliment for such a modestly priced Oregon pinot). I'd stop short of serving the Studio pinot with lamb, duck or goose, however, as it's just not deep enough for those flavors. But it's light, with fresh red fruit in the aroma and enough earthiness to keep it balanced.

The J. Daan was interesting. It had almost no aroma at all, just the barest hint of fruit, but it was the most powerful in the glass of the three I tasted. If you've reached the point in your wine-tasting experience that you understand it when the winemaker talks about a "strong mineral backbone," that's what this wine has in spades. If that's just wine-snob jargon to you, let me explain: if you've ever dug a hole, whether for a garden or to plant a tree or just because you were a kid and digging a hole was fun, you must remember the way freshly dug earth smelled, dark and cool but neither sweet nor sour. That's what "strong mineral backbone" means when it applies to wine: the sense that the vines have extracted this fresh, cool strength from the soil itself, like Antaeus getting his power from being in contact with the earth. The J. Daan layered elements of blackberry on top of this earthy substrate, making for a powerful and satisfying pinot that could stand up to much heartier fare than most pinots; I wouldn't hesitate to pair this with a mixed grill including beef and Italian sausage as well as pork or chicken, or even a mildly seasoned prime rib.

The Boedecker was closest to the style of wine I personally enjoy the most, with more power than the Carlton Winemakers Studio but more complexity than the J. Daan. A luscious bouquet hinting at black cherry, with a bit of the forest-floor earthiness that becomes transcendent in the best Oregon pinots, this one is a good all-rounder, though at $28 you're approaching the price of a reserve pinot that will have even more of everything. However, this is still a worthy taste, and as I sipped it I couldn't help but think of osso buco, the Milanese dish made by braising veal shanks in a sofrito (the Italian name for the "holy trinity" of savory vegetables: carrots, onion, and celeray) with wine, sage and fresh brown stock till the meat slides off the bones as you lift the shanks from the simmering liquid.

In the end, I left with a bottle of the Carlton Winemakers Studio pinot noir because Kim has been craving salmon lately and this really will be superb with salmon on the grill, especially since she broke down recently and did a test piece by marinating it in fresh blackberry juice before cooking over indirect heat. And I had to buy a Hamacher chardonnay (and yes, I promise to write up my conversation with Eric at the Chardonnay Alliance dinner before we head to Ashland next week).

And finally, as a shot in the dark, I bought a bottle of Boedecker rose. Kim and I are very fond of certain kinds of rose, but only certain kinds; as I put it recently, we like roses that are more like red wine served cold, rather than roses that are like white wines turned pink. One of my benchmark rose preferences is Randall Grahm's Vin Gris de Cigare, from Bonny Doon in Santa Cruz, California; made from a blend of southern French varietals (grenache, syrah, mourvedre, cinsault, etc.), this one is bone-dry and very, very subtle, but with the kind of balance and complexity that a good Cotes du Rhone brings, but light enough to chill and sip while watching the sun slip into the Pacific. The staff at Carlton Winemakers Studio concurred that of the various rose offerings they had, the Boedecker was the fullest-bodied and most like a red wine in complexity and dryness. It's still in the refrigerator now; I'll be sure to add tasting notes when we try it.

Got a favorite discovery in Oregon wine? Have a tip on a farmer's market or roadside produce stand with an emphasis on organic and sustainable treats? Let me know!

Fresh and Local—the confluence of great food and great chefs

The American dining scene has been through a revolution in the past twenty-five years or so. It's a revolution of ingredients as well as technique, of content as well as style. The weapons have included the spade and digging fork as well as the chef's knife and whisk; the battlefield, an organically farmed garden or ideally situated vineyard as well as a Wolf range, a wood-fired stone oven, and a white linen tablecloth.

Fresh and Local is a celebration of what this revolution has brought us: a confluence of incredible skill with unparalleled ingredients, a fusion not only of the cuisines of different cultures, but of the disparate skills involved in growing and producing premiere ingredients on the one hand, and turning those ingredients into new, cutting-edge dining experiences on the other.

Soil. Climate. Passion. These are the holy trinity of great food. And at Fresh and Local, we'll explore what happens when you combine the commitment to producing the best ingredients with the obsession for turning out perfect new dishes.