By Raul Dias
Exactly a year ago, in September 2017, the holy trinity of dark, milk and white chocolate saw an interloper called ruby chocolate disrupting their unchallenged hegemony for its own piece of the chocolate pie (pun intended!). All this, a good 80 years after white chocolate was first inducted into the hallowed ‘chocolate hall of fame’, much to the horror of the chocolate cognoscenti, who, at that time, swore by their traditional dark—and to a lesser extent—milk iterations of chocolate.
With a countenance that can best be described as ‘hot pink’ and a taste that has a hint of fruity notes coupled with a tart finish, ruby chocolate made its brazen presence felt as the ‘fourth’ and newest kind of chocolate. Introduced by Barry Callebaut, a Belgian-Swiss cocoa company, the chocolate is made from the ruby cocoa bean. Found in Brazil, Ecuador and the Ivory Coast, ruby beans are existing botanical cocoa bean varieties that have been identified as having the right attributes to be processed into ruby chocolate. And these attributes include an all-natural darkish pink colour and a unique berry-like taste, sans any added artificial colouring or flavouring agents.
Interestingly, ruby chocolate was only made available for sale to consumers in January this year, when it was introduced in Japan and South Korea with the limited-edition ruby Kit Kat bar. Similarly, in India, Fabelle, the luxury chocolate brand from ITC has recently announced a limited run of just 1,800 boxes of its ruby gianduja where the pink-hued chocolate is combined with a ganache made with Turkish hazelnuts.
(This column first appeared in the 18th November 2018 issue of The Hindu newspaper's Sunday Magazine section on page 8)
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