Paul and Mike, an artisanal chocolate brand from Kerala, has become the first Indian company to win a silver at International Chocolate Awards 2020-2021 for its ‘64 Percent Dark Sichuan Pepper and Orange Peel Vegan Chocolate’.
Commenting on the win, the company said in a social media post, “Today was a proud day for us – Paul And Mike is the first Indian chocolate brand to be awarded a Silver at the world finals of International Chocolate Awards! Our stated purpose since our inception has been to “provide the quality of a Pacari for the price of a Lindt.”
Pacari is a shorthand for high quality Latin American chocolates while Lindt is a shorthand for mass produced Swiss-Belgian chocolates.
“Today, after almost 3 years of consistent work put in behind the scenes, we have been judged to be in the same league as Pacari- literally! And with the recent depreciation of INR against Euro, we are now actually priced lower than Lindt! For us here at Paul And Mike, all this is just a milestone. We know that we can take our quality many notches higher and at our farm, fermentary and factory, we are always at work making that happen.”
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The ‘bean to bar’ chocolate maker launched this chocolate variant in May 2019. It has a sweet-and-spicy taste. In an interview with The Hindu, the company mentioned that the cocoa it uses is dried and fermented on its farms in Kochi and Coimbatore. It sources wet cocoa from select farmers in Kerala and Andhra Pradesh, and uses only real fruits, nuts, spices and floral distillates in the chocolates.
