Producing chocolate is a time consuming and complicated process.

The first step is to harvest the cocoa pods containing the beans and ferment them for about six days, after which the beans are split from the pods and dried. The finest chocolate is produced when the drying process is done naturally by the sun for about 7 days, accelerated or artificial drying is quicker but produces the vastly inferior chocolate used in most mass produced products.

The next process is shared with coffee in that the beans are first roasted then graded, and ground.

The resulting powder is pressed to extract the fat or cocoa butter,

The residue or cocoa powder or, as it is called in the trade, 'cocoa mass'.

This powder or 'mass' is blended back with the butter and liquor to make the different types of chocolate or couverture as follows:

Plain Chocolate - cocoa powder, cocoa liquor, cocoa butter and sugar.

Milk Chocolate - cocoa powder, cocoa liquor, cocoa butter, milk or milk powder and sugar.

White Chocolate - cocoa liquor, cocoa butter, milk or milk powder and sugar.

The finest plain chocolate couverture contains at least 70% Cocoa solids. Whereas the best Milk and White Chocolate couverture contains 33%+ Cocoa solids. Inferior and mass produced chocolate contains much less cocoa, (as low as 7% in many cases) and strictly speaking these "Brand Name" milk products can not be classed as couverture or even chocolate, because of the low or non-existent cocoa solids content.

The penultimate process is called “conching” A conche is a type of container filled with the refined and blended chocolate mass, kept liquid as a result of fractional heat. The length of time given to the conching process determines the final smoothness and quality of chocolate. The finest chocolate is conched for a minimum of a week! After the process is completed the chocolate mass is stored in heated tanks at about 45-50°C, ready for final processing.

The final process is called Tempering, because cocoa butter exhibits a polymorphous or unstable crystal formation the mass must be cooled very carefully to encourage the crystals to stabilise in the right order to produce the desired properties of snappy bite, tender melt and a good gloss in the finished product.. All this is achieved by the tempering process, first the mass is cooled in stages from about 45°C to about 27°C and then warmed up again to about 37°C followed by cooling down to it's solid state.