Dick Taylor Craft Chocolate: Two Boat Builders in Eureka, California, and the Bars That Look Like They Were Carved
Eureka sits on Humboldt Bay at the far north of California, six hours from San Francisco, in redwood and fog, and it is not where anyone would put a chocolate factory. Adam Dick and Dustin Taylor were there already, building wooden boats and furniture, when in 2010 they started roasting cacao in a workshop and found they were better at it than most people who had been doing it for years. The company they built, Dick Taylor Craft Chocolate, became one of the most decorated bean-to-bar makers in the United States, and it kept the woodworker's habits: bars molded with the precision of joinery, wrapped in patterned paper that is actually letterpressed, and made from as few ingredients as the thing will allow. This is the producer guide, from the shop floor to the six bars on our shelf; our bean-to-bar process piece explains what every one of those steps means.
The founders
Dick and Taylor came to chocolate as makers, not as chefs. Their background was craft in the literal sense, boats and furniture built by hand, and they approached cacao the way they approached wood: learn the material, buy the best you can find, work it slowly, finish it beautifully. They roasted their first beans in 2010, sold their first bars at a farmers' market, and moved into a proper factory in Eureka's old town as the bars won awards. The company remains in Eureka and remains theirs, which in a category that has seen many of its pioneers sell to larger firms is itself a statement.
Two ingredients
The dark bars are cacao and cane sugar. No vanilla, which the industrial trade adds to cover a commodity bean; no soy lecithin, which is added to make chocolate flow through machinery faster; no added cocoa butter beyond what the bean brings. The milk bars add whole milk powder and stop there. The reason is the same one that runs through our bean-to-bar guide: when you have paid for a specific farm's beans, fermented well and roasted lightly, anything you add is something you have to taste around. Dick Taylor roasts on the lighter side to keep the origin's fruit and acidity, and conches long enough to round the edges without flattening them, and the result is a house style that is clean, bright and precise.
The molded bar
The bars are the most recognizable in American craft chocolate, and the reason is the mold. Each bar carries a deep, intricate pattern that the founders designed and that shows off a properly tempered chocolate's shine and snap, which our process piece explains is the last and most unforgiving step in making a bar. A badly tempered bar would not release from a mold like that, and a dull one would look wrong; the design is a quiet guarantee of the craft underneath. The wrappers, printed letterpress on heavy paper with a different pattern per bar, are the woodworker's finish applied to a food, and they are part of why a Dick Taylor bar is the one people give as a gift.
The bars on our shelf
Fleur de Sel. Dark chocolate with flakes of French fleur de sel, the skimmed surface salt our salt harvesting piece describes. The salt lands in crystals rather than dissolving into the bar, so each bite has a moment of brightness against the cacao. The bar to open first.
Lemon and Bergamot, 65%. A dark bar with the citrus oils of lemon and the perfumed orange of bergamot, the flavoring in Earl Grey. Bright and slightly floral; the bar for anyone who thinks dark chocolate is heavy.
Milk Chocolate with Hazelnuts, 55%. The house milk chocolate, at a cacao percentage far above the supermarket's, with roasted hazelnuts. Dark milk is the maker's quiet specialty: enough cacao to taste of chocolate, enough milk to be gentle. The bar for a Piedmontese mood.
Vanilla Milk, 55%. The same dark milk base with real vanilla bean, the one place the maker adds vanilla, and adds it as a flavor rather than a cover. Clean, creamy, and the bar that converts milk chocolate skeptics.
Peanut Butter. A dark milk bar layered with roasted peanut butter, the American candy-counter idea made with real chocolate and real peanuts. Our peanut butter and jelly guide would approve.
Strawberries and Cream. A white chocolate and dark chocolate bar with freeze-dried strawberries, the maker's most playful bar and the one to bring to a table of children and adults who pretend not to want it.
The single-origin dark bars, including the Madagascar that made the company's name, come and go with the harvest; when they are on the chocolate shelf, they are the bars to taste side by side with another maker's Madagascar, per our tasting guide, to see what a light roast and a long conche do.
How to taste them
Break, do not bite: listen for the snap, look at the shine. Let a piece sit on the tongue before chewing so the cocoa butter melts and the aroma rises. Taste the Fleur de Sel first, then the Lemon and Bergamot, then the two milk bars, and finish with the peanut butter or the strawberries, because sweetness and fat dull what follows. Keep the bars cool and dry and away from the refrigerator, where they bloom, and away from strong smells, which chocolate absorbs.
Why the workshop matters
The connection between the boats and the bars is not a marketing story. A person who has spent years fitting planks to a hull has learned patience, precision, respect for the material and a low tolerance for shortcuts, and every one of those habits shows in a chocolate that refuses to add vanilla, tempers to a mirror and wraps by hand. The bars are at 263 Josephine Street in Cherry Creek, Denver, and ship nationwide from theambrosianpantry.com. Save the wrapper; people do.
