A lot of work goes into crafting beautiful, artisanal chocolates, like these from Ragged Coast Chocolates in Westbrook. As summers get hotter, local chocolate shops that mail-order must work harder than ever to ensure the chocolates arrive at their destinations without melting. Derek Davis/Staff Photographer For some Maine industries – skiing, snowmobiling , fishing – climate change is an existential threat.
For others, it’s impact is equally real, if less consequential. Put local chocolatiers in that second category. Longer, hotter summers are changing the way they must do business in small but time-consuming and costly ways.
“Chocolate and high temperatures really don’t get along!” as Allison Holt from Haven’s Candies in Westbrook and Portland neatly summed up the problem in an email. The bigger challenge for chocolatiers, it turns out, is not making the chocolate on the sort of sticky, sweaty days we’ve experienced this summer . It’s shipping the chocolate.
Like many of us, chocolate prefers low humidity and a nice, steady temperature of around 65 degrees F. (This is doubly true for fine chocolate, which lacks the stabilizers and preservatives of, say, your average Hershey bar.) That’s why, in the rooms where chocolates are crafted, the air-conditioning runs “24-7, 365 days a year,” said Colleen Osselaer, general manager of Harbor Candy Shop in Ogunquit.
The problem comes once those gorgeous raspberry creme baskets, blueberry black pepper truffles, .