Once cooled, the chocolate is wrapped up ready to be sent out. While some of the biggest makers have machines to help with this, most makers still wrap their bars completely by hand (often roping in family members and whoever else is around to help).

 The final step in making a finished chocolate bar is pouring it into a mold. The melted chocolate is simply poured into plastic bar-shaped moulds and agitated to remove any air bubbles. Larger chocolate makers will have machines and conveyors that deposit exactly the right amount of chocolate into each mold, but many smaller manufacturers still do this part by hand.

 Great chocolate should have a shiny finish and a good “snap”. This is created by tempering, the process of raising, lowering and raising the temperature of the chocolate to form exactly the right kind of crystals. Tempering can be done by hand, but the process would be extremely time consuming, so tempering machines are used.

 Traditionally, the cocoa mass is transferred to a separate machine called a conch, where it is further refined. It’s during this process that sugar, milk powder and other flavorings are added. The conching process can take anything from a few hours to a few days and affects the chemical structure of the chocolate, as well as the particle size.

 The cocoa nibs are ground with stone rollers until they become a paste known as cocoa mass or cocoa liquor. This pure, unrefined form of chocolate contains both cocoa solids and cocoa butter (the natural fat present in the bean). Cocoa butter can be extracted from the cocoa mass. This is useful because most chocolate makers often use extra cocoa butter to give their chocolate a smoother, glossier texture.

 The roasted cocoa beans have a thin, papery shell around them which needs to be removed, so at this point in the process, the beans are cracked open and the shell is removed in a process called winnowing. The lighter shells are blown away with fans, leaving behind pieces of pure cocoa bean, known as “nibs”.

 The next step in the process is roasting. This is done by the chocolate maker rather than the farmer. A few chocolate companies make their chocolate at source where it grows, but the hot climate required to grow cocoa makes the chocolate making process more challenging. Most chocolate is made in cooler climates, like Europe or North America.

 After fermentation, the next step in the process is to dry the beans. This is usually done by spreading them out into a single layer in the sun. Most beans are transferred into sacks and transported around the world after drying, so in order to prevent mold, it’s important that they’re completely dry at this point.

 The pods and pulp are placed into large wooden containers, where the pulp is allowed to ferment for five to seven days. During the process, the beans are turned to help them ferment more evenly. This is the first stage in developing the flavour of the chocolate, and part of the reason why a farmer can have a direct impact on the quality of the finished chocolate.

 The process begins with harvesting. Ripe cocoa pods are harvested twice a year. The harvest times vary from region to region, but the process of turning it into chocolate begins immediately. The pods are cut open with machetes and the white pulp containing the cocoa beans is scooped out.