GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

The House of An­gos­tu­ra has added a brand new type of bit­ters to its port­fo­lio, co­coa bit­ters.

And more­so, this forges key re­la­tion­ships with lo­cal farm­ers to strength­en the coun­try’s agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor and fur­ther pro­pels T&T on the in­ter­na­tion­al map.

It is the third and newest type of cock­tail bit­ters from the com­pa­ny with the lead­ing bit­ters brand.

At the of­fi­cial launch yes­ter­day, An­gos­tu­ra’s Co­coa Bit­ters was de­scribed as “a dis­tinc­tive ex­pres­sion ex­pert­ly craft­ed with fine Trini­tario Co­coa Nibs.”

The com­pa­ny’s chair­man Ter­rence Bharath ex­plained the blend com­pris­es Trini­tario co­coa, a nat­ur­al hy­bridza­tion be­tween Criol­lo and Foras­tero that of­fers the flavour of the for­mer and the strength of the lat­ter.

This va­ri­ety is pro­mot­ed by the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Co­coa Re­search In­sti­tute for a fine and fruity flavour and its im­por­tance in the grow­ing agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor.

“The out­put of an in­dus­try that al­most died in the 1900s will soon be ac­knowl­edged with our la­bels in over 1200 Wal­marts in the USA with the po­ten­tial to be car­ried in­to thou­sands of bars, ho­tel, restau­rants, su­per­mar­kets, shops around the globe and it will al­so be avail­able around the world for pur­chase,” Bharath ex­plained.

He said the launch al­so co­in­cid­ed with an un­prece­dent­ed mo­ment, when peo­ple around the globe are spend­ing more time at home due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

This has sparked a wave of ‘DIY’ in the kitchen at home and at bars.

“As a time­less brand that has been flavour­ing the world for the past 196 years, we have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­spire mixol­o­gists, drinks en­thu­si­asts and home chefs to seize this time of cre­ativ­i­ty and ad­dress their ap­petite for au­then­tic­i­ty and nat­ur­al in­gre­di­ents,” he added.

Bharath said An­gos­tu­ra has al­ready con­tact­ed lo­cal pro­duc­ers to en­sure a steady sup­ply of co­coa for its pro­duc­tion process

“In fact, the de­mand for our lat­est in­no­va­tion has al­ready sur­passed ini­tial pro­jec­tion,” he ex­plained.

Bharath not­ed that An­gos­tu­ra’s co­coa bit­ters will cre­ate end­less pos­si­bil­i­ties to boost the coun­try’s for­eign ex­change earn­ings.

Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon who al­so spoke praised An­gos­tu­ra for be­ing one of the lead­ing firms for in­no­va­tion and ex­pan­sion of the do­mes­tic man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor.

She said the launch rep­re­sent­ed a strate­gic move by the com­pa­ny to tap in­to that very lu­cra­tive aro­mat­ic bit­ters mar­ket which is ex­pect­ed to ex­pand glob­al­ly to ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$12.7 bil­lion by 2024.

“T&T is a sig­nif­i­cant ex­porter of al­co­holic bev­er­ages to the world which has been iden­ti­fied as a Ris­ing Star in T&T’s Trade Pol­i­cy to mar­kets such as Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and East and South Asia,” Gopee-Scoon said.

She said ac­cord­ing to Trade­Can’s Com­pet­i­tive­ness Analy­sis of Na­tions, aro­mat­ic bit­ters has al­so been iden­ti­fied as a Ris­ing Star with re­spect to its mar­ket share in to­tal ex­ports.

Ris­ing Star prod­ucts are those that are in high growth mar­kets and make up a size­able por­tion of that mar­ket and hence should be in­vest­ed in.

The An­gos­tu­ra team led by Mas­ter Blender, Car­ol Homer-Cae­sar, cre­at­ed the recipe for this lat­est prod­uct.

“We be­lieve our lo­cal­ly cul­ti­vat­ed Trini­tario co­coa de­liv­ers a far su­pe­ri­or flavour pro­file to oth­er ge­o­graph­ic re­gions. Our hope is that our new, ex­pert­ly craft­ed, co­coa bit­ters in­spires peo­ple to cre­ate their own sig­na­ture cock­tail and food recipes to savour and en­joy with fam­i­ly and friends,” Homer-Cae­sar said.

An­gos­tu­ra’s Co­coa Bit­ters now com­pli­ments its or­ange bit­ters which was in­tro­duced 13 years ago.