They had always mixed and ground their own nibs. The process of separating the cocoa solids and the cocoa butter was slow but worth the quality control it provided. Then they remixed them in precise portions with sugar, milk for the milk chocolate, and sometimes other flavorings. Granddad had always taught them to conch the chocolate for a full twenty-four hours. Chocolate was tenaciously gritty until it was ground with metal beads to break it down. Tony jumped the twenty-four hours to three full days—for mouthfeel, a trade secret he’d learned while sleeping with a pretty little Swedish chocolatier named Rosalie.
He forced Vic to buy a second conching machine so that they could run dark and milk chocolate batches at the same time. Vic went totally lame and bought a small machine without c
