The ‘best chocolate in America’ is found in a little barn in Mass.

SUDBURY — For about the fifth time in the previous 10 minutes, I’d just had my mind blown by a piece of chocolate I’d eaten in a barn.

So did Linda Moy, a Groton resident who was also taking the tour of Goodnow Farms Chocolate in Sudbury. She summed it up better than I ever could.

“It doesn’t taste like any milk chocolate I’ve ever had … I can taste the cow!”

Linda, myself and the rest of our tour had just gotten a taste of what the International Chocolate Awards named the best bar of milk chocolate in North America earlier this year — Goodnow Farms’ Classic Milk bar.

It was one of a series of glass-shattering moments during the chocolate-tasting session. After touring the small production building, we were experiencing the highlight of the tour in a rustic barn next door.

The Colombian dark chocolate was bright, clear and fruity with minimal bitterness. The Apple Cider chocolate warmed my palate and my soul. The Putnam Rye Whiskey chocolate drew incredible flavor from oak barrels without the usual bite of whiskey. The award-winning Caramelized Onion chocolate rewired my brain with a flavor combination I thought would never work — but did.

The last 90 minutes had changed basically everything I ever knew about chocolate. I learned how chocolate is actually made and how this little operation in Central Massachusetts does it differently from nearly every major producer in the world.

For the husband-wife team of Tom and Monica Rogan, it was just another day at the office — a picturesque office on a 225-year-old farm where they’re redefining what one of the most popular foods in the world can taste like.

Goodnow Farms Chocolate in Sudbury

For the past 10 years, Goodnow Farms has been producing some of the best chocolate in the world, winning more International Chocolate Awards than anyone in North America.

So it’s with a strong resumé that they bill themselves as “the best chocolate in America.”

However, Goodnow Farms is still a small operation. They don’t have their own designated retail space and are only open for a handful of factory tours per month.

That’s because the Rogans’ chocolate-making business started as a hobby where they could work from home and still spend time with their family.

As of now, Goodnow Farms’ sales are limited to online orders and through other retailers. Duck Soup, a specialty store a couple of miles down the road in Sudbury, typically has the full selection of Goodnow Chocolate products for sale.

It’s a lot of trouble to go through for a bar of chocolate, especially one that runs $16-20. You may be thinking, “Why would I spend that much when I can get a Hershey’s bar for $2 at CVS?”

To answer that, we need to talk about how chocolate is made.

The epiphany: This is what chocolate can taste like

During our tour, Tom and Monica explained how most major companies make the chocolate:

1. They buy commodity beans in bulk without caring about the variety or origin. They just want quantity.
2. They overroast and alkalize the chocolate, stripping away its characteristics and nutrients.
3. They suck out the cocoa butter to sell to cosmetic companies and replace it with cheaper soy lecithin to replicate the mouthfeel.
4. They load it with additives that shape the flavor instead of the chocolate.

As Tom puts it, most popular brands are to chocolate as Velveeta is to cheese. The cheaper stuff is derived from chocolate, but the actual flavor you get is from additives like vanilla.

That’s how we can wind up with the sort of epiphany that Linda and I experienced during our tour. We haven’t tasted this type of chocolate before because we hadn’t been exposed to a product that retained the original characteristics of chocolate.

That moment where everything clicks for the consumer is at the core of what Goodnow Farms is trying to accomplish.

“Nobody understands what chocolate is, where it comes from, how it’s made, any of that,” Tom says. “And to see that realization happen is wonderful … That’s one of the main reasons we do this.”

How to make world-class chocolate

What makes the chocolate from Goodnow Farms different? Basically, it’s every step of the process from how the cacao beans are grown to how the bar is made.

Goodnow Farms uses cacao beans similar to how a winemaker uses grapes. They focus on small geographic areas and pinpoint the exact type of bean and flavor profile they’re looking for.

That’s only after Tom and Monica have gone down to Central America to try the beans and build relationships with the farmers. The Rogans put an emphasis on working with farms that pay their workers well and provide healthy working conditions, which is unfortunately not common in the industry.

The beans are fermented and sun-dried on the cacao farms before being shipped to Sudbury. After that, they head to the Goodnow Farms chocolate kitchen, where the magic happens.

Beans are roasted in a custom-modified oven to precise temperatures and carefully separated from their husks before heading to the grinders. It’s there that the beans are refined over the process of hours and days. During that time, the other ingredients are added.

For a bar of dark chocolate, there are only two ingredients that are added.

The first is organic cane sugar, because even the most vivid of chocolate flavors needs sweetness.

The second is fresh-pressed cocoa butter, which is added to supplement the cocoa butter already present in the beans ground into the bar. That’s to provide extra creaminess to the chocolate, giving it a more luxurious, melt-in-your-mouth texture.

The process is slow, labor-intensive and expensive. The Rogans say it’s impossible to make quality chocolate with less processing than what they do.

“Instead of processed food, we’re as minimally processed as you can get so that you can retain the full flavor of the seed and fruit,” Monica says.

The goal: Fine flavor

There’s a phrase that Tom and Monica use a lot when talking about their chocolate: fine flavor.

For newbie consumers like me, it’s the little characteristics in the chocolate that make my brain do back flips.

For Goodnow Farms Chocolate, it’s what they’re trying to bring out in every step of their process.

“For us, it means chocolate that is true to the flavor of the beans it was made from. … Because most chocolate is flavored, but it’s all artificial,” Tom says. “Fine flavor means that whole process has been curated and the final flavors are ones that were real.”

The Rogans know that people will see a $20 price tag on that bar and say, “That’s ridiculous.” There’s not much awareness around single-origin, bean-to-bar chocolate like what they make.

What Goodnow Farms sells is not for everyone, and it’s never going to replace what you can get from Hershey, Nestle, Lindt or Godiva.

It’s like that top-shelf whiskey. Whether it’s a 750ml bottle or a 55-gram chocolate bar, a lot of work went into that product. That price is higher. But if you take your time and savor it, the experience is unlike anything you may have had before.

What to know about Goodnow Farms Chocolate

The easiest way to get ahold of Goodnow Farms Chocolate is to order on their website or use their store locator to find retail locations.

The Rogans recommend sampling as a way to expand your horizons and figure out what you like. The best way to do that is by going on one of Goodnow Farms’ factory tours, which run $40 and include chocolate samples.

Tour dates are currently limited to a couple of dates per month in the spring and fall.

Outside of tours, Goodnow Farms Chocolate is not open to the public.