‘This used to be the barn,’ explained Johannes as they came to the bottom of the stairs. ‘This place belonged to my grandfather’s brother, he lived here all his life, and his grandfather before him. In those days, the cattle were kept here in the winter, and then in the spring they would go up to the alpine meadows for the whole summer and stay there until late autumn.’
‘So your great-uncle,’ Mina worked out that’s who it would have been, ‘must have known Amelie’s grandparents.’
‘Yes, this was a very tight-knit community. Amelie and I played together as children for a couple of summers. We used to swim at the lake, Geschinersee.’
‘I didn’t realised you’d known each other for that long.’
His eyes suddenly twinkled. ‘We were seven or eight then. I don’t think that counts as knowing each other.’
‘Do people change so much?’
‘Huh. Not in some ways, I realise. Amelie was always rescuing small creatures back then. Although when I met her in my late twenties, she had changed a lot. Quite the party girl. Like every man, I was completely entranced by her. She was like a comet bursting through the sky at a hundred miles an hour. And like a pompous prig, I blew it. Expected to cut her wings and have her dance to my tune. I had a job in Zurich. I gave her an ultimatum. Come with me or…’
Mina stared. ‘I had no idea.’ Amelie had never given any indication that there’d been anything between her and Johannes.
‘Why would you? It clearly didn’t mean that much to Amelie, whereas…’ He paused and leaned forward to open the door at the foot of the stairs. ‘I made the biggest mistake of my life. I never met another woman who could match her.’
He suddenly gave Mina a shrewd look.
With guarded eyes she looked back, but he didn’t say anything more.
‘Now I’m trying to make up for lost time. I worry she doesn’t look after herself properly, yes. She needs more help in that place. It’s too much for one person, but she’s so stubborn.’ That, Mina suspected, was the kettle calling the pot black, and he seemed to do quite a bit of helping whether Amelie wanted it or not.
‘I think she wants to prove she can do it.’
‘Hmm,’ growled Johannes leading Mina into a bright, airy space with whitewashed stone walls. Surprised, she blinked at the blue-white brightness of the room lit by stark LED lights.
‘It looked very different in here when I started. Of course, I’ve done a lot of work to insulate it now. There are still plenty of barns in the villages throughout this valley who still farm the old way.’ His craggy face broke into a smile. ‘And a good job, too. It’s their milk that makes all the difference, although every damn cheese producer and artisan chocolate maker claims the same.’
Having heard this in detail at La Maison de Gruyère, Mina ginned back at him. ‘And what do you think?’
‘Actually, old cynic that I am, there might be something in it. Why shouldn’t the grasses, wild flowers, and herbs the cows eat create character in their milk? It’s certainly a good marketing angle.’
The room was far more modern than she’d expected, and Mina was impressed with the amount of machinery he had, completely dousing her expectation that it would look homespun and small-scale. This had more in common with a craft beer micro-brewery, with its gleaming stainless steel vats and shiny silver pipes running overhead from one to another. She looked at him, surprise in her eyes.
‘This is why I don’t let people come in here very often. One, hygiene is very important, and two—’ his eyes suddenly twinkled ‘—I prefer to let them imagine it’s all magic, pure alchemy, rather than the hard, scientific work that needs to be put in to make the alchemy happen. And while there is a lot of science involved, there’s also a certain amount of magic.’
Mina recognised in the sudden upbeat lift of his voice, the passion for his subject. ‘Have you ever seen a raw cacao bean? Damn ugly things. They remind me of some sightless sea creature that lives at the bottom of the Marianas Trench.’
Mina didn’t think anything lived at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, but she got the idea, having seen the display at the factory tour the day before. Chocolate definitely came from humble origins.
‘To get from that to this—’ he held up a cellophane-wrapped bar of chocolate that he produced from his pocket ‘—is pretty incredible.’
Once Johannes started talking, she found it fascinating, and the two of them chatted happily as equals. He was clearly a little flattered by her interest, but also equally impressed by her knowledge. Although she hadn’t made chocolate herself, she knew enough about food production processes to ask plenty of in-depth questions.
Chocolate was complex stuff, she learned, and making it like this was very time-consuming. The main process that was responsible for the texture and consistency of the chocolate, and which made the difference between high-quality and low-quality chocolate, was the conching process.
Johannes patted the top of stainless steel piece of kit, which was making a regular hum with a rhythmic whirring noise.
‘Take a look inside.’ He lifted the lid.
‘Oh, the smell. That’s delicious.’ She peered into the large container at the smooth liquid chocolate churning away inside in elegant, sinuous movements.
‘This is conching. It’s a kneading and smoothing process that ensures all the particles in chocolate face the same way. Imagine the nap of a fabric or a piece of velvet. If you stroke it the wrong way, you rough up the surface or the pile.’ He paused and gave her a very stern look. ‘I think relationships are like that. If you find someone where the particles all face the same way, where you don’t rub each other the wrong way, it’s a good match. Understand.’
She nodded, surprised but also intrigued and a little bit charmed at likening finding love to a type of food processing. It seemed rather appropriate.
‘Finding that without having to go through the conching process – which I see as negotiation and compromise, which I had to do with my first wife – is a rare thing.’ He said the latter with considerable warmth and stared at her intently.
