Co­coa farm­ers Gee­ta and Leroy Pe­ters from Grand Riv­iere, Jacque­line and Mar­tin Matthew from Tamana, re­cent­ly won the In­ter­na­tion­al Co­coa Awards (ICA) at the 25th edi­tion of Sa­lon du Choco­lat in Paris, France.

Ac­cord­ing to a state­ment by the Co­coa De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny of T&T, the In­ter­na­tion­al Co­coa Awards, held every two years, is co-or­di­nat­ed through the Co­coa of Ex­cel­lence Pro­gramme, spear­head­ed by Biover­si­ty In­ter­na­tion­al. The awards recog­nise qual­i­ty, flavour and di­ver­si­ty of co­coa ac­cord­ing to their ori­gin.

The T&T farm­ers placed first out of 223 en­tries from 55 coun­tries. A third sub­mis­sion by Jac­in­ta and Michael Milne of Bethany Es­tate, Tal­paro, was ranked among the world’s top 50.

The Pe­ters won the in­au­gur­al Na­tion­al Co­coa Awards, held ear­li­er this year in the South­ern Acad­e­my of Per­form­ing Arts (SAPA).

Fol­low­ing which they were sent to Paris to net­work with in­ter­na­tion­al ar­ti­san choco­latiers and co­coa buy­ers.

The Co­coa De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny said the Pe­ters re­ceived the In­ter­na­tion­al Co­coa Awards for the re­gion of Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and Caribbean.

Their choco­late was de­scribed by judges as hav­ing “very fruity flavours, like or­ange and a bit of lemon, al­so some ex­ot­ic fruits as man­go, that bonds all the qual­i­ties of the co­coa along with lit­tle acid­i­ty”.

Jacque­line and Mar­tin Matthew, of Tamana, al­so won an In­ter­na­tion­al Co­coa Award for their co­coa beans.

The Co­coa of Ex­cel­lence Pro­gramme is the en­try point for co­coa-pro­duc­ing coun­tries to par­tic­i­pate in the In­ter­na­tion­al Co­coa Awards.

T&T’s co­coa pro­duc­ers were cho­sen out of the Na­tion­al Co­coa Award for Qual­i­ty pro­gramme which con­clud­ed in Feb­ru­ary 2019 with an awards cer­e­mo­ny.

This is the first time the Co­coa De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny ex­hib­it­ed a na­tion­al booth at the Sa­lon du Choco­lat to show­case T&T’s co­coa beans and lo­cal­ly pro­duced choco­lates.

“We are con­nect­ing T&T co­coa pro­duc­ers to in­ter­na­tion­al ar­ti­san choco­latiers, niche choco­late mak­ers and co­coa buy­ers, thus strength­en­ing our link­ages to glob­al mar­kets, and em­pow­er­ing the co­coa farm­ers of T&T,” the Co­coa De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny not­ed.