Marou

Best of Marou - Chocolates from Vietnam

Six South Vietnamese provinces gave the Single Origin chocolate bars from Marou their name. All provinces have their own specific character and the different types of soil make the chocolates taste different. As a natural product, cocoa tells us a lot about the soil and the season. Experience the taste sensations. The history of cocoa in Vietnam is shaped by from and from - now it has been rediscovered and here you have excellent handcrafted chocolates that offer you the variety of flavors of the country.

Marou, founded by two French, discovered the finely flavored cocoa in the parts of the country, which remained hidden for over a century. French missionaries brought cocoa to Vietnam in the 19th century, let's just say it may not have been the most successful company. That or the records have disappeared. We know with a little more certainty that a missionary, Father Gernot, planted cocoa trees in Ben Tre in the late 1800s.

Administrative records from the early 20th century show that the Lieutenant General lifted the subsidies for cocoa farmers after only 17 years. "It seems effectively useless to promote this culture, which to date has not produced satisfactory results," he stated in a decree of January 24, 1907. A few trees remained in the Mekong Delta, where the fruits were mostly consumed fresh. Without significant investment or expertise, cocoa remained a marginal product in the colonial days of Vietnam.

The second act in Vietnamese cocoa history takes place in the dark hours of the 1980s, when scanty trade with the USSR (and a few other Eastern Bloc countries) kept the Vietnamese economy afloat. Soviet chocolate experts and their Kuban friends tried Vietnam, but by the time the cocoa trees began to bear fruit, the Berlin Wall had fallen and Russian buyers had disappeared. Once again, the farmers had no customers and felled all but a handful of trees.

Vietnam's cocoa renaissance: After the end of the US embargo, international commodity traders, NGOs and foreign development programs came on the scene, providing development aid and growing cocoa for the world's growing chocolate appetite. As the market also grew in China, the bosses of the large manufacturers hoped to save significant costs by making chocolate bars from cocoa grown in nearby Vietnam. Academics like Dr. Phuoc of Nong Lam Agricultural University helped create programs to support the efforts of smallholders in a number of provinces.

The government of Vietnam invested and planted cocoa in all parts of the country to achieve quantity. Experts estimate that cultivation boomed, peaking at five thousand tons in 2010, only to shrink again as farmers turned to more lucrative crops like pepper and pomelo.

During this period, however, many of the country's aging farmers saw cocoa as a stable and promising alternative. You could grow the shrub along with coconut and other easy-care products. They could also make extra money by harvesting, fermenting, and drying their own beans. Marou is now working closely with farmers who are passionate about cocoa and whose hard work makes Vietnam one of the most exciting new cocoa producers in the world.

In 2016, Vietnam was recognized as the place of origin for fine-flavor cocoa. Not least thanks to the free advertising offered by Marou, cocoa junkies started popping up in Vietnam and looking for the distinctive and flavorful beans.

THE FUTURE?

Cocoa cultivation is slowly but surely picking up again. However, it faces enormous challenges: climate change has limited freshwater supplies in the Mekong Delta and triggered a vicious cycle of drought and storm in the highlands. Marou is now experimenting with a sustainable, low-impact crop that is grown in a mountainous jungle. As the first artisanal chocolate maker based in Vietnam, Marou is committed to finding a sustainable way for the farmers who today consider themselves family.

  Note: The chocolates in this set may vary due to availability, but are of course always from Marou.