Mark Burrows has been a busy bee. For about a year, the Carbondale-based chocolate maker has been crafting micro-batch, single-origin chocolate from imported beans, pollinating local palates with fruity flavors from faraway lands.
“I like single-origin chocolate—I want to taste the chocolate,” Burrows declared last weekend on the front porch of the Emporium and Flying Circus on Main Street. “Every location has a different flavor. Tanzania tastes totally different from the Dominican Republic. (Cacao from one) plantation tastes like black olives! That’s the terroir of the area.”
His Pollinator Chocolate pop-up, which returns on Friday and Saturday, Aug. 21 and 22, displays an enticing chocolate mosaic: dozens of smooth bars packaged in clear plastic sleeves to showcase wallpaper-worthy cacao-bean imprints created by the molds. Platters of whole, roasted cacao beans and cacao nibs, plus a descriptive flavor wheel, allow visitors to better understand the chocolate production process and articulate flavors identified within samples from Pollinator’s 17 (and counting) chocolate varieties.
