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Chicago's Priciest Chocolate Sells for $260 Per Piece

 One $260 box of To'ak chocolate includes a 50-gram  bar, a cacao bean and tweezers made from Spanish elm to use while handling the chocolate so finger oils don't interfere with the taste. Toth says he chose Spanish elm because it's a hearty, sustainable tree that isn't endangered, and it's noted for being odorless and flavorless.
One $260 box of To'ak chocolate includes a 50-gram bar, a cacao bean and tweezers made from Spanish elm to use while handling the chocolate so finger oils don't interfere with the taste. Toth says he chose Spanish elm because it's a hearty, sustainable tree that isn't endangered, and it's noted for being odorless and flavorless.
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Courtesy To'ak

CHICAGO — The first batch of chocolate from Chicago-based boutique producer Jerry Toth is so exclusive — and so expensive — it would make Willy Wonka blush.

Only 574 dark chocolate bars were produced in the first batch from Toth's company, To'ak, which sources its beans from heirloom trees in Ecuador and charges $260 for each 50-gram bar. 

Each harvest produces such a limited quantity that a counter on the company's website keeps track of how many bars are still available and is updated after every sale. Toth said that as of Wednesday night, 17 bars from the inaugural batch have already been opened.

Lizzie Schiffman tried a piece, and says it had a surprising taste:

 To'ak bar pieces (l.) and Chicago-based founder Jerry Toth.
To'ak bar pieces (l.) and Chicago-based founder Jerry Toth.
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Courtesy To'ak

Each box bears a serial number and comes packaged with a single bar, a cacao bean and tweezers made from Spanish elm to use while handling the chocolate so finger oils don't interfere with the taste. Toth said he chose Spanish elm because it's a hearty, sustainable tree that isn't endangered, and it's noted for being odorless and flavorless.

Humble origins

A Wicker Park resident and self-described chocolate fanatic, Toth, 36, grew up in Winnetka and worked for a few years on Wall Street before moving to Ecuador in 2002.

He had spent a few years at investment firm Solomon Smith Barney "getting to work in the dark and leaving in the dark, when I looked around at guys who had been doing this for years ... and realized I didn't want this life," Toth said.

Cashing out a year's worth of profits and a healthy recent bonus, Toth took off for three years, "surfing around South America and finding myself," he said.

While in Ecuador, he created the Jama-Coaque Ecological Reserve on the coast, a nature preserve that sits in the center of cacao country in the Manabi province.

He also fell in love with the area's main export,and made two friends who would shape what would become To'ak Chocolates. 

The To'Ak team

First was a local farmer who showed Toth a hidden valley previously unreachable by paved roads that contained an untouched collection of Fino y de Aroma cacao trees.

For a chocolate lover, this was a gold mine. 

A 1916 outbreak of "witches' broom," a fungus that feeds on cacao trees, decimated the country's reserve of the coveted Fino y de Aroma beans. Most chocolates produced today use hybrids, but connoisseurs who trace cacao heritages like wine aficionados study grapes widely regard the rare Fino y de Aroma beans to be among the most prized and flavorfully complex.

Toth's second To'ak partner was Austrian expatriate Carl Schweizer, who was living in Quito with his wife and shared Toth's interest in exporting meticulously-produced pure-cacao chocolate. He agreed to oversee operations from Ecuador year-round, and used his training as a designer to help design the brand's packaging.

The pair co-founded To'ak last year in partnership with 14 local farmers and a full-time staff of about five, Toth said.

The next big thing

Toth says he anticipates that within five years "dark chocolate tasting will be something that people in the U.S. do," like wine or bourbon tasting.

"In 10 years, I worry it'll be even a saturated market," he said.

Part of the marketing plan for the chocolate includes organizing pairing tastings, with recent events planned at distilleries and Chicago's City Winery.

The To'ak bars will be available in Chicago exclusively at Lush Wine and Spirits, which has locations at 1257 S. Halsted St., 1412 W. Chicago Ave. and 2232 W. Roscoe St. The only other current U.S. distributors are in Silicon Valley and Beverly Hills, but Toth said expansion plans include Dubai, Hong Kong and Tokyo.

The chocolate is 81 percent cacao, 19 percent sugar and includes no other ingredients or adulterants. Each batch is hand-fermented, roasted and cured in Spanish elm barrels on the farm in Ecuador, and each To'ak package is hand-packed.

Toth said the packaging process was so meticulous he was booted from the assembly line for not folding the packing paper to the team's standards.

Priced to share 

While the $260 price tag may seem steep, Toth said  it's close to cost for the rare beans and the meticulous production process, which he and Schweizer oversee at every step.

"We're not really profiting," Toth said. "At best, we're hoping to make a living doing something that we love. I don't think I'll ever make enough to be able to buy chocolate like this for myself," he joked.

To further justify the price, Toth noted that a single bar is designed to be split between "four to six people, in a tasting setting like at a dinner party." Proper tasting form calls for small bites that are allowed to dissolve on the tongue.

To that point, the bars are divided into four three-piece quadrants for easy sharing.

Toth said at a premiere tasting Wednesday that he and his teammates had vowed not to eat the bars themselves to save as much as possible for people to taste worldwide.

But he snuck bites of as many pieces as he could.

"I'm so excited to open these," Toth said through a grin while carefully unwrapping a package, taking what he called "a $30 bite."

"I really, really love this stuff."

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