All chocolate comes from a bean—or, more accurately, the seed of a cacao tree. But not all chocolate companies oversee the laborious process that takes the bean from a bitter, crunchy seed to the chocolate bar you buy in the store. The difference lies in the name. There are lots of chocolatiers. There are very few chocolate-makers. And Chris Tomchik of Ballston Spa’s Confluence Chocolate is one of them.
“A chocolatier is starting with chocolate,” Chris told me when I stopped by Confluence Chocolate’s new(ish) Ballston Spa factory earlier this week. “So they’re using chocolate and other ingredients to make confections. ‘Chocolate maker’ means you have to start with beans to actually make the chocolate.”
The process begins with giant bags of beans that come to Chris from around the world: Peru, Belize, Ghana, Ecuador, and India, each of which produce beans with a slightly different flavor. Chris’ personal favorite comes from the Anamalai Estate in the foothills of India’s Western Ghats that has notes of guava and peanut. Whereas many commercial chocolate companies blend beans and dark-roast them to achieve a consistent flavor year over year, Chris light-roasts his beans to preserve the unique flavor of each region and growing season.
After the roasting oven, the beans continue on a whirlwind journey through a series of specialized machines, including the winnower, which cracks the beans and separates the outer husks from the inner nibs; the pre-grinder, which turns the nibs into a paste; the ball mill, which uses thousands of tiny steal balls to grind the paste even finer; the conch, which stirs, heats, and aerates the chocolate; and the tempering machine, which melts, cools, and reheats the chocolate to form cocoa butter crystals that provide a satisfying snap when you break the finished bar. “And we’re not even halfway done,” Chris told me.
Obviously, the labor-intensive process makes bean-to-bar chocolate makers few and far between—the nearest producer to Confluence is Fruition Chocolate Works in the Catskills. So when Chris, a pharmacist who’d dabbled in making his own beer and wine, discovered bean-to-bar chocolate, he turned to Craft Chocolate TV on YouTube. His idea to make a few bars to sell at farmers’ markets was quickly quashed when he learned that New York State requires chocolate makers to have a commercial license. Clearly, Chris isn’t one to shy away from laborious processes: He found a space in Ballston Spa that he could have equipment shipped to in January 2025, and sold his first bar on Thanksgiving of that year.
Now, Confluence Chocolate is available online; at select locations in Ballston Spa, Malta, and Saratoga; and at the Ballston Spa Farmers’ Market (Saturdays), Spa City Farmers’ Market (Sundays), and The Shirt Factory’s Thursday Market & Food Truck Corral in Glens Falls. The regular bars are allergen-free and made with just three ingredients—cocoa beans, organic cane sugar, and cocoa butter, plus less than 1 percent sunflower oil—while specialty bars are topped with toppings like dried strawberries and maple glass. Then, there’s the popular truffles and frozen strawberry chocolate pops, available only at markets.
In less than a year, Chris has made a name for himself both in Saratoga County and the chocolate world. Last week, Confluence had its official ribbon-cutting with the Ballston Spa Business Association, and more and more businesses keep asking Chris to carry his products.
“I never thought I’d be leaving my full-time job after just seven months,” he says of going all in on Confluence. “My general philosophy is to hope for the best, plan for the worst, and shoot for the stars. And so far, shoot for the stars is what we’ve been getting.”
—Natalie