De­siree See­baran

Oc­to­ber 1 was World Choco­late Day, and choco­late con­nois­seurs have tak­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to make Oc­to­ber a month of cel­e­bra­tion in ho­n­our of that flavour­ful, deca­dent bean that comes from the ca­cao pod. Lo­cal choco­late mak­ers like Clement Bobb, pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Co­coa Farm­ers As­so­ci­a­tion and man­u­fac­tur­er of a de­li­cious sin­gle es­tate dark choco­late bar, want to cel­e­brate more tan­gi­bly this year.

On Oc­to­ber 5, Bobb, along with oth­er mem­bers of the lo­cal Fine Co­coa Crafters Guild, host­ed a live ra­dio show with Ra­dio Tam­brin at Ciao Caf&ea­cute;, Scar­bor­ough, To­ba­go. Bobb's Olan­do choco­late bar and prod­ucts from oth­er lo­cal choco­latiers like Delft Co­coa Plan­ta­tions and Co­co­bel Choco­lates were on sale as mem­bers of the guild chat­ted with their ra­dio hosts about the ori­gins of the choco­late prod­ucts and why these lo­cal en­tre­pre­neurs cre­ate them. Ciao Caf&ea­cute;, al­so a mem­ber of the Guild, made a spe­cial dark choco­late gela­to made with lo­cal co­coa.

"We want to high­light the fact that we not on­ly grow some of the world's best co­coa, but that we make great choco­late in Trinidad and To­ba­go," Bobb said. The Trini­tario ca­cao species is called fine flavour co­coa on the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket, which means that the taste, bou­quet and qual­i­ty are su­pe­ri­or to many oth­er species.

The hy­brid was ac­tu­al­ly cre­at­ed in To­ba­go, and ca­cao beans from T&T are used to add flavour to oth­er va­ri­eties of "bulk" co­coa for mass-pro­duced choco­late prod­ucts.

But the in­dus­try has ex­pe­ri­enced a se­ri­ous de­cline over sev­er­al years, and on­ly now are stake­hold­ers mak­ing a com­bined ef­fort to re­vive it. What's spe­cial about the choco­lates made by lo­cal choco­latiers is that it's usu­al­ly hand-made with over 70 per cent co­coa, with­out ad­di­tive and fillers: a true gourmet prod­uct.

Delft Co­coa Plan­ta­tions and Co­co­bel Choco­lates both pro­duce choco­late prod­ucts that pair the fruity rich co­coa with com­ple­men­tary tastes: for in­stance, Co­co­bel's Bark Choco­late fea­tures some­times tart, some­times sweet dried pineap­ple driz­zled on top of a dark choco­late ganache, bro­ken in­to ir­reg­u­lar pieces that re­sem­ble tree bark.

Bobb's Olan­do Choco­late bar is made en­tire­ly in To­ba­go. He fer­ments and dries his beans, then us­es a cot­tage in­dus­try type fac­to­ry in his home to pro­duce 1,000 bars per month. And he's es­tab­lished quite a fol­low­ing in To­ba­go. He hopes to get some pub­lic­i­ty at US choco­late shows and grow his de­mand in that mar­ket as well. But here in T&T, the taste for dark choco­late made from our own beans, which is revered by true food­ies the world over, is still a slow process.

"Peo­ple don't re­al­ly ap­pre­ci­ate choco­late as a food," Bobb said. "The rea­son that we're mak­ing choco­late now is that for years we've on­ly been do­ing one thing-grow­ing co­coa to sell on the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket. And one of the rea­sons that the in­dus­try has gone down is that we are not at the busi­ness end. "Mak­ing the choco­lates is a mar­ket­ing ef­fort that high­lights that it can be done here, and we are do­ing it."