The Northwest Chocolate Festival 2026

Making the link between soil health and fine flavor chocolate

As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, we'll take a look back at the important role chocolate played in colonial and  even Revolutionary times, including the forgotten social custom of drinking chocolate being served and shared amongst adults.

In this 50-minute presentation and tasting, I will share how KESSHŌ uses Asian-inspired bean-to-bar chocolate as a medium for collaboration, storytelling, and sensory exploration.

Rather than treating collaboration as simply putting two brand names on one product, I will talk about how we approach it as co-storytelling: finding the shared language between cacao and another brand’s world. Through examples including a Michelin-recognized Texas BBQ collaboration in Austin, Fly By Jing’s chili crisp, and Quinta do Noval Port wine, I will explore how chocolate can connect with smoke, spice, umami, fruit, tannin, texture, and cultural memory.

The talk will move between creative process, flavor development, brand storytelling, and tasting. We will look at how a collaboration begins, how we decide what story the chocolate should tell, and how we translate another brand’s identity into a bar that still feels true to KESSHŌ’s craft.
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I hope to communicate that chocolate is more than a finished product. It can be a meeting place between cultures, crafts, ingredients, and people.

Through tasting and storytelling, I want the audience to experience how collaboration can expand the way we think about chocolate. A chocolate bar can carry the patience of slow BBQ, the confidence and aromatics of chili crisp, or the elegance and depth of Port wine. But for a collaboration to work, it must be more than surprising. It has to be balanced, intentional, and emotionally understandable.

I also hope to show that Asian-inspired flavors in chocolate are not a novelty or decoration. For KESSHŌ, they are a way of bringing memory, culture, and perspective into the craft of bean-to-bar chocolate. My goal is to communicate this through sensory experience: tasting, smelling, comparing, and discussing how flavors tell stories.
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The audience will experience a guided tasting that connects flavor with story. They will taste examples that show how chocolate can interact with other culinary worlds, including smoke, spice, umami, wine, fruit, and texture.

They will also learn how KESSHŌ thinks about collaboration from both a creative and technical perspective, including:

How to identify a meaningful sensory bridge between two brands.
How to balance strong flavors without overwhelming the cacao.
How to preserve the identity of both collaborators.
How to turn a flavor idea into a product with a clear story.
How tasting can become a way of understanding culture, craft, and brand identity.

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The audience will leave with a broader understanding of what craft chocolate can be. They will see how chocolate can move beyond traditional pairings and become a platform for creative dialogue across food, culture, and brand identity.

Long before cinnamon and cane sugar became the default, Mesoamerican cooks engineered a botanical masterpiece: the marriage of cacao and capsicums.
Moving beyond the modern novelty of "spicy chocolate," this session delves into the neurogastronomy and historical foodways of this ancient pairing. Attendees will discover the biological brilliance behind the union and extract structural lessons from ancestral Maya drinks, Mexican moles, regional savory recipes, and Spanish interpretations.
Transitioning to contemporary applications, the presentation offers actionable techniques for cooks, chefs, and craft chocolate makers. We will discuss cultivar layering, such as blending the zero-heat musky notes of ají dulce with a fraction of habanero to capture immense Capsicum chinense flavor without masking fine cacao.
Finally, the session covers the mechanics of small-batch bean-to-bar production for flawless, perfectly dispersed capsicum heat in chocolate.
The session concludes with a visual exploration of diverse capsicum profiles—mapping distinct species characteristics and their ideal botanical pairings with specific regional cacaos.

This session explores the science of tempering in a practical, approachable way. I will compare hand tempering and machine tempering techniques, discuss the advantages and limitations of each approach, and share practical troubleshooting strategies for changing environments, varying chocolate formulations, production schedules, and equipment. Whether working in a small artisan kitchen or a larger commercial operation, attendees will gain the confidence to diagnose and correct common tempering problems before they affect production and leave with a deeper understanding of how to consistently produce beautifully tempered chocolate without using thermometers or memorizing temperatures.

America loves chocolate, and chocolate mirrors our nation back to us through law: chocolate engages human rights and environmental law, Constitutional and corporate and criminal law, intellectual property and consumer and food protections, rights of women and of indigenous peoples, and multiple additional areas along with Supreme Court and other judicial opinions, federal and state statutes, FDA and Customs regulations, and fundamental notions of ethics, life, liberty, and happiness. Our upbeat and interactive session will include a chocolate tasting of small-batch U.S. brands as we explore chocolate through law and mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Students will be graded on a written paper analyzing a topic of law and chocolate -- just kidding: you get an "A" (and chocolate!) for attending!