Boing Boing tv Best of 2008: TCHOcolate Magical Mystery Tour Trilogy

Continuing in our retrospective of favorite BBtv episodes from 2008, today's feature is an encore presentation of our three-part visit to the delicious, trippy, techy TCHO factory in San Francisco. The "chocolate for a new generation" startup was hacked together by a space shuttle technologist, Timothy Childs, and the founder of Wired, Louis Rosetto.

Part one is embedded above, parts two and three below, and here are direct MP4 links to all: one, two, three. Snip from the original post:

In part one of Boing Boing tv's multi-part exploration of Tcho, we begin in the lab, and learn about the origins of chocolate: it's a weird looking fruit with biological roots in faraway tropical lands. How this fruit is cultivated, harvested, and cured determines the flavor of the final product, and we learn about the hedonics -- the sensual nuances -- of this exotic and temperamental element.

Blog posts with more chocolicious background on all that we experienced there:

• [IWood]

  chocolate.bacon.boingboing.net

  And then the world ends.

• [ben]

  TCHO Chocolate part 3 is so amazingly entertaining. That whole interview might have been a trifle boring straight up, but add in some psychoactive undertones and holy crap that’s golden. I lol’d pretty hard at the buzzed comment, genius I say.

  Keep up the excellent work!

• [Rob Beschizza]

  I propose we start a new site, “Boing Boing: Chocolate,” and humbly volunteer to edit it.

  • [Xeni Jardin]

    @Rob: chocolate.boingboing.net. Get in line, bub, I already called dibs on being the taster-in-chief.

• [buddy66]

  YES!! Feel free to call on me as a volunteer tester. Anytime!

• [OM]

  …So is this stuff available for sale yet? I’d be curious to see if it breaks my face out like most other American-produced(*) chocolates do.

  (*) Read: contains brown dyes that recolor the chocolate after it’s had the alcohol removed because of some retarded post-Volstead Act law governing alcohol content in food. All prohibitionists will wind up in Hell, bank on it!

• [Eddie Codel]

  @OM: The TCHO store opened just before Christmas. Lots of goodness there now. I can’t speak to the dyes, but TCHO is organic, vegan and slave free.

  http://www.tcho.com/store/

• [Antinous]

  Is BB Chocolate being rolled out before or after BB Poultry?

  • [Xeni Jardin]

    @Antinous — yes, and right before that, BB Bacon.

• [allwerasking]

  This is one of the best info-pieces I have ever seen. If the chocolate is as smooth as the interviewee it is a winner!