How does a crop’s environment shape a food’s smell and taste?
About seven years ago, Kristin and Josh Mohagen were honeymooning in Napa Valley in California, when they smelled something surprising in their glasses of Cabernet Sauvignon: green pepper. A vintner explained that the grapes in that bottle had ripened on a hillside alongside a field of green peppers. “That was my first experience with terroir,” Josh Mohagen says. It made an impression. Inspired by their time in Napa, the Mohagens returned home to Fergus Falls, Minn., and launched a chocolate business based on the principle of terroir, often defined as “sense of place.” Different countries produce cocoa with distinct flavors and aromas, Kristin Mohagen says. Cocoa from Madagascar “has a really bright berry flavor, maybe raspberry, maybe citrus,” she says, while cocoa from the Dominican Republic “has a little more nutty, chocolaty taste.” The couple estimates that back in 2013, when they founded Terroir Chocolate, about 50 other small batch chocolate companies in...