Why chocolate?
For the simple reason that it grows on trees. There are several excellent chocolate companies out there so why add one more? Well, the times we live in call for a new kind of enterprise, one that protects and restores the Earth. Chocolate is both delicious and restorative, and it conveys our deep relation with tropical rainforests. Did you know that the cacao tree reserves its fruits for our kind, i.e. primates? Chocolate in the truest sense is a tree-treat. Original Beans exists to replant trees and conserve rainforests.

What is the message of Original Beans and how do you think it applies to the average chocolate eater?
Every chocolate eater has an intrinsic relationship with trees and rainforests since that is where cacao comes from. Nowadays, we are literally eating up these resources. We are depleting this planet to the brink. For example, cacao varieties - original beans - are disappearing at a staggering pace. If we wish to continue consuming, then together we must find ways to conserve and replenish the bounty of the Earth. 'The Planet: Replant It' is how Original Beans has phrased this mission and put it at the core of our company's work and identity. Most people want to give back. It's up to producers, companies like ours, to offer ways to do it.

There is a tree-tracker sheet in each package of chocolate. Do you plant a tree for every bar produced or for every tree that's been used up?
For every bar purchased, local community farmers that we subsidize plant a tree that supports the forest of origin. Not just rare cacao trees, but a mix of trees necessary for lively biodiversity. Each Original Beans bar contains a lot number, which designates the location of a new tree so that consumers can track their contribution. The purpose is to give small farmers the means and incentives to not 'use-up' trees. The forest is of no use to them, unless and until it's transformed into charcoal. Once the forest is slashed and burned, the reversal is almost impossible since it requires a steep investment. In this way, small farmers become a major force of rainforest destruction in the world, destroying about 4 hectares of virgin forest per farmer per year and emitting more greenhouse gases than you and I combined. In this vicious cycle of poverty and burning forests, the mainstream cocoa industry ranks as a main culprit. Replanting is a crucial action.

What would you want day to day consumers to know about the chocolate creation process?
The most fascinating thing about the chocolate creation process, I think, is still under development. We actually don't know very much about chocolate making. Wine creation has been practiced and studied for centuries. Cacao has not, but holds the same complexity and richness of knowledge. There is still a lot to learn and to innovate, and we can all be part of it, whether as a producer or a consumer.

What lead to your love for conservation?
I grew up with a deep sense of nature, spending my childhood years in the forests, lakes and mountains of Southern Germany. I learned about the old, sustainable farming traditions as well, but my love for conservation also runs in the family. Over generations, my ancestors have been earth scientists, agriculturalists and foresters. One of them, Georg Ludwig Hartig, is remembered for his late 18th century thesis about modern forest management, where he speaks of sustainability as the prerequisite of managing forests in a way to leave future generations as much as the current has. I have always felt intuitively that this is one of the most important ideas of my lifetime, challenging as it may be.

I know your favorite flavor of Original Beans is Esmerelda's Milk, why is that?
I joke that life is like the Esmeralda's Milk, sweet and salty at the same time. At Original Beans, we love surprising our customers and ourselves. That's how we arrived at introducing the first ever single-sourced chocolate from the Congo, our Cru Virunga bar. For the Esmeralda's Milk, we thought that by producing a distinct, deep milk chocolate, which leads away from the expectable flat, sugar-milk taste, without giving up on caramel notes and exquisite creaminess, we would surprise the senses. And how about a hint of sea salt to top off?

What's your favorite food?
I am vegetarian, and follow a vegan diet for the most part. Vegetables are my staple food, preferably grilled on an open campfire somewhere farout (which would be less staple).

What is so important about knowing where your food comes from?
One of my greatest food pleasures is to talk to the goat cheese guy at our local and weekly farmer's market. When I buy cheese from him in the afternoon, he will tell me what happened with the goats this very morning. Chocolate doesn't grow around the corner, but it is the product of a long and complex supply chain. However, we can make it as transparent as a farmer's market product: direct, trustworthy and delicious.

What was the most challenging part of starting Original Beans? Why?
Building and maintaining a fully integrated and transparent value chain, from forest conservation to consumer experience was and is the most challenging part of growing this business. At the same time, it is the most rewarding part. It has really unveiled the double meaning of the term 'value chain'. Original Beans works because we are privileged to find and partner with people who share the same values.

What's the hardest aspect of chocolate making?
Making' good beans, we believe, is the hardest part. As a rule of thumb, we say that out of 100 percent quality in the final product, 50 percent is added by nature, 25 percent added by farmers, and 25 percent added by manufactures. So 75 percent of what our taste-buds get excited about is created in a remote, rural and under-developed situation in war-torn Virunga or in the Amazonian wilderness of the Beni. That's the reason why there are still so very few good chocolate products to choose from.

What exactly is conching and why does it make chocolate special?
Conching is the process of 'stirring' the chocolate's ingredients in order to make them bond and bring forth their combined full flavors. In the case of Original Beans' pure chocolates, those ingredients are: micro-grinded cacao mass, cacao butter, and organic cane sugar - that's it. It is extraordinary how the conching process develops the flavor details of those few ingredients during the long hours we conch. It's our call to say: now, after 20, 40, 60 hours, stop, this is the peak flavor moment, it doesn't get any better than that. There are many philosophies and technologies when it comes to conching, all the way from high-tech to 'raw' chocolate. At Original Beans, our take is 'true to bean' and subtle. To this end, we also make use of different conching technologies, among them the original, friction-heated conches which Mr Lindt developed in the 19th century. We want you to taste the originality of the natural, wild honey-flavor in the Beni Wild, but we want other notes to remain alongside - like a bouquet of flavors as diverse as the rainforest itself.

When you're not consuming Original Beans chocolate, what are some of your other favorite treats?
Apart from chocolate, I am not much into sweet treats. I am very fond of fruits, tropical fruits in particular, and a visit to the Californian family farm of Original Beans' co-founder Lesal Ruskey, where her brother grows a bounty of organic tropical fruits is a very special treat.

Which foreign country inspires you the most?
I find any country inspiring in its own right. Having said that, the United States is where I lived and worked for several years and continues to inspire me as a nation that struggles more transparently than any other with the sustainable and responsible transition from consumer materialism to natural capitalism. On the other end of the spectrum, my experiences in Eastern Congo inspire me deeply. This is a place as non-material as it gets: people live in clay houses, cook over open fire, commute on bare feet. People are just regaining peace and confidence after a terrible war. And while their circumstances couldn't be more different, they share the 21st century with us: they use cell phones; they trade with China; and they will decide what happens to the common heritage of the African rainforests.

What was the most spectacular meal or dessert you have ever had?
My mother's Sachertorte. My mom is from Vienna, the origin of the Sachertorte, and the recipe has been handed down through generations. The secret is not so much in the ingredients - Original Beans 75 percent Piura Criollo couverture from a small valley in Peru - but the texture. What can I say: pure bliss...

If Original Beans had never taken off, what would you be doing?
I would be doing what I have been doing for the past decade and will continue to do for the next: finding ways and founding enterprises that make a difference to the protection and restoration of our planet's natural world and - ultimately - to our own well-being as children of nature.