Ao Cacao
Words: Anna King Shahab
Photography: Supplied & Blink Ltd.
For years, a question has been rattling around in chocolatier Thomas Wright's head: "What does New Zealand chocolate taste like?" In the early days of his bean-to-bar chocolate making business Ao Cacao Thomas ran wild, experimenting with often obscure flavours in his attempts to find answers to the question, while juggling the hands-on making of chocolate with running a shop, and employing and training staff. He achieved accolades both here and internationally but says he began to feel overstretched and a little all at sea- and he still hadn't answered the question. Moving into a kitchen studio in Uptown two years ago and stripping the business back to basics has enabled him to reset his compass and follow his chosen path: to become renowned at home and abroad for making truly New Zealand chocolate.
His craft brings together several key threads: his family heritage, New Zealand's agricultural prowess, and small-scale cacao farming in the Pacific, which Thomas is determined to support. On his mother's side, his family founded Wright's Dairy in London's Chelsea in the 1700s, and he traces Jewish ancestry. His paternal whakapapa is to Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Whātua, and Te Whakatōhea, with baking a family trade. Thomas went to chef school to become a pastry chef and cut his culinary teeth in restaurant kitchens, including Thomas Keller's famously innovative French Laundry in Yountville, California. But it was an earlier apprenticeship with famous Scottish chocolatier William Curley that sparked the passion that saw Thomas launch Ao Cacao five years ago.
Thomas sources beans directly from farmers in Samoa and Papua New Guinea, which arrive fermented and dried. In his kitchen in Uptown, he gets to business roasting and conching the nibs in a marvellous piece of equipment called a melanger. It's a painstaking several-day process, which - if you do it correctly- produces a silky, glossy chocolate. The respect with which he treats the beans extends to the people and places that nurtured them beforehand. "Working directly with growers like Floris Niu in Samoa gives me total transparency," he explains. "I know everyone in the supply chain is earning a fair profit, and that's important to me. I feel it's my responsibility." the way feeds his desire to learn. "There's so much knowledge to gain from the ways in which other cultures approach cacao, how they honour it," he says.
Thomas, who was the first indigenous chocolatier to attend Salon du Chocolat, has a keen interest in connecting with and supporting fellow indigenous makers and farmers in the industry, and sources the cacao, vanilla, and macadamias he uses from indigenous farmers.
Trends in artisan chocolate craft in recent years have shifted away from milk chocolate - no doubt in part because of the low-quality connotations of mass-produced chocolate that lean heavily on milk and sugar, as well as other additives.
But Thomas, not one to blindly follow trends, sees reason and indeed opportunity in inviting dairy back into the story and highlighting the quality of it. It makes particular sense here in Aotearoa. "We are the land of milk and honey," he says. His dairy milk collection includes bars made with A2 cow's milk, sheep, goat, and deer milk, each with a distinct flavour. This is just the beginning - Thomas is excited to further explore how dairy could be a hero ingredient that sets chocolate from Aotearoa apart.
This doesn't mean he's closing the lid on the more experimental flavours and formats. He loves collaborating with top chefs and producers to make bespoke creations. Currently he is working with local operators Paris Butter, The Wine Room, and Bear Gelato, and is about to embark on a five-week collab series with two fine dining restaurants in Singapore. But having the confidence to keep things simpler with his core range enables him to focus on the quality, the relationships, and ultimately the responsibility he feels for keeping an ancient craft alive.
He recently learned that an ancestor of his several generations back, the first Thomas Wright of Wright's Dairy, sent an apprentice from London to Te Aroha to gain knowledge to bring back to the UK. The circularity of this fact hit home with Thomas, who himself has an exciting retail collaboration coming up in the UK-it signalled to him he was on the right path. "I think a lot about the connections between our food heritage, our stories, and what we put on the plate," he says. "I want Ao Cacao to reflect New Zealand in a way that's honest, creative, and responsible."
Ao Cacao
Unit 2, 30 Fleet Street
Website: aocacao.com
Instagram: @ao.cacao
