These chocolates came to me though my good friend Angelo from London's Borough Market, then transported to Belgium, and home with me to Cambridge, Ma.
I met up with Angelo in Belgium as part of a beer business trip. That business being my husband was getting Knighted by the Knighthood of the Brewers' Mash Staff (Belgian Brewers' Guild).
Angelo being an excellent partner in drinking, is also a main contributor to my blog. Contributor in the fact that he finds and sources all the best chocolate in London for me to write about. Also, some nice gems from Italy.
West Indies Chocolate. Where do I begin? Thankfully the Rabot Estate website is chock full of information.
The Rabot Estate is Saint Lucia’s oldest cocoa estate, and was first established as an agricultural estate around 1745.
It was bought 5 years ago by two UK based entrepreneurs, Angus Thirlwell and Peter Harris, the original founders of Hotel Chocolat . At that stage cacao growing on Saint Lucia was on its knees; no future, no investment, no pride and no quality.
Angus grew up in the Caribbean and always wanted to connect chocolate and cacao. A customer sent him an old book published in 1920 about cacao growing, which he read while he was visiting his father who lives in Barbados. This was a moment of serendipity which inspired him to get into cacao growing. Peter always wanted to have a farm, so although he is a Chartered Accountant and naturally quite cautious, he was game on too!
Since then, Angus and Peter have invested heavily, re-planting thousands of new cacao trees, raising the quality of the fermentation to get a fantastic quality bean and putting together a team of local talent led by Phil Buckley – a resourceful cacao tree hugging eco-engineer. His wife Judy is an expert on team building and quality control. They have reached out to the other cacao growers on the island to stimulate a Cocoa Renaissance as part of their Engaged Ethics programme.
There are now 80 growers who have formally joined the scheme.
They get a commitment
- all the beans they grow will be bought, giving a secure and guaranteed market
- they will be paid about 30% above world cocoa prices
- will be paid 1 week after delivery
- free technical help
- subsidised cocoa tree seedlings to plant out
Now there is a thriving cocoa growing sector and an estimated 300 new jobs have been created amongst these growers. Sustainable benefits brought about by making investments of time, money and passion.
I really admire websites that include detailed information about their chocolate. The Rabot Estate has included some good information about the bean varietal Trinitario including some genetic confirmations.
Making Chocolate History:
Saint Lucia is home to some of the world’s most sought after, fine flavour cocoa – the Trinitario bean. It’s a natural cross between the brilliant, but difficult to grow, Criollo strain and the hardier, but less complex, Forastero. So it’s strange, but true, that the world has never before tasted chocolate made with Saint Lucia’s Trinitario cocoa – previously all St Lucian cocoa has been exported and mixed into blends.
This enterprise has enabled the taste of Saint Lucian chocolate to be tasted for the first time ever.
The rare chocolate on sale currently is from the fourth harvest of beans from Saint Lucia and includes cacao from 80 of our neighbours. The cacao arrives at Rabot Estate ‘wet’, which is to say freshly scooped from pod, so that we can ferment and dry the beans to our exact scientific specification – because that's where the true flavour profile of the bean is developed.
With each batch of chocolate improving on the last, this, our fourth cuvée is the best yet. And with each harvest, our experience and knowledge of how to get the best out of these fine flavour beans grows. This year the beans have been subjected to a lower temperature roast, for a slightly longer time, which has preserved more of the multi-layered flavours and resulted in something milder and more sophisticated in nature.
The recipes, as always, contains no vanilla, allowing the true flavour notes to come through unimpeded.
Finding Dr. Pound's Lost Cacao:
In 1727 something catastrophic hit the island of Trinidad that changed the complexion of cocoa forever… THE BLAST
Some say it was a hurricane, others suggest it might have been drought or disease. Whichever way you look at it however, the “blast” that hit the West Indian island of Trinidad in the 18th century all but destroyed the island’s cocoa industry, one of the world’s largest at that time.
It was the Spanish who first brought cocoa to Trinidad around about 1525 and they brought with them the fine flavour Criollo trees. But it wasn’t until the beginning of the 18th century that Trinidad’s cocoa industry really took off – thanks to the French who colonised the island after the Spanish. So when the “blast” hit, it devastated the fledgling industry.
In 1757, efforts to rebuild the industry began in earnest with Forastero trees imported from nearby Venezuela – known for their resistance to disease. The new trees then interbred with the remaining Criollo trees and formed a brand new strain of cocoa, which was called Trinitario. The new strain combined the best of both parents – the hardiness of Forastero and the fine flavour of Criollo.
The Science Bit:
The hybrids quickly multiplied and formed the basis of most of the estates that needed replanting. After that, there was no looking back and over the next 150 years cacao came to dominate the Trinidadian economy. The vast array of trees in Trinidad contained just about every combination of characteristics known to cocoa, so it was no surprise that they attracted a world famous expert from Imperial College, FJ Pound.
His thorough studies over a period of years culminated in his identification of 100 different strains of Trinitario tree, selected for high yield and good quality beans. They were called the Imperial College Selections (ICS) and were numbered from 1 to 100. The next step was to carry out field trials at the San Juan Estate in Trinidad to further refine the selections – it became the most successful cocoa breeding programme in the world.
However, by 2001 only 57 of the original 100 ICS clones remained…
We now travel north up the West Indian island chain, as Trinitario cocoa trees must also have done, passing Grenada and St Vincent and arriving at St Lucia. Here, on the Rabot Estate, we’ve been conducting our own studies into the cocoa found on our plantation. With the help of a UK university, world experts in cocoa genetics, we’ve managed to identify many of the types of cocoa growing on the estate, but there’s one in particular that has got us very excited and not only because we’ve just seen the first pod produced by the cloned trees that we have planted out.
They confirmed that they are definitely Trinitario, however, there is no exact match with any of the survivors from the original ICS clones. But they do share some ancestors, so they could well be part of the lost ICS 100 selected by FJ Pound.
A rare breed indeed...
Furthermore, it’s known that Dr Pound collected some upper Amazonian trees and later produced some more hybrids using the ICS strains. So our trees could also be part of this lost Pound selection. The university believes that, eventually, they can be fully identified. But from where ever they have been lost, they have now been found on the Rabot Estate and it seems that they are very rare. We can’t wait until more trees bear pods so that we can make the very first chocolate from these exceptional beans.
My apologies for all the cutting and pasting. I love websites that detail their information. I also wanted to be sure everyone read it versus just putting the links up.
There was a third bar to be reviewed, but while hanging out at the Moeder Lambic in Brussels, the gang of rabid drunks I was sitting with demanded we try one on the spot.
All I can say about this poor soul, was that it was delicious. My palate however was properly shot from drinking hop bombs all night like the freshest De Ranke XX, I have ever had.
This beer with all of it's fresh and floral hops no doubt was the reason I tasted unripened mangoes on the chocolate. But the rich nutty characters as well as leather and rich tobacco would not be overshadowed by my hoppy mouth.
Conching (in a nut shell) is a process in which cacao beans are broken down in to finer particles releasing more aromas and flavors or softening acidic qualities from fermentation. These are two examples of a 65% dark cacao conched at different times.
** I do want to note that I am scoring the appearance of these bars slightly different than normal do to all the travel circumstances. These bars were packed in a way not meant for world traveling. They held up pretty good none the less.
65% Dark 120 Hour Conching
Type: Bittersweet, 65%
Bean Varietal: Trinitario, Hybrids
Ingredients: Cocoa solids (minimum 65%, sugar, soy lecithin.
Sample Size: 35g or 1.23oz
Lot #: 10137
Appearance: This bar held up well for being taken from London, to Brussels, to Boston. It did suffer a major break in the bar, but the overall appearance was nice, not nicked up, smooth and shiny except near the major break line. Monogrammed molding with intricate pattern, but no molding lines leaving for asymmetrical break lines.
Score: 91
Snap: Lightly firm, but barely audible snap. Clean, but asymmetrical break lines.
Score: 88
Aroma: Bright acidic nose, tart and citric, nutty, roasted cacao, and then a strange flowery powdered sugar nose. Like cotton candy and the remnants of a once flowery perfume sprayed on a testing paper days ago still holding on for dear life. Very faint though. Very interesting.
Score: 93
Taste: Sweet, and very sugary right up front, deep berries, dried fruits, roasted cacao flavors, nice woody characters, tiny hidden hints of bananas, lingering bitterness once all the sugar goes away.
Score: 89
Texture: Very smooth and soft, lightly creamy, medium-fast melt time.
Score: 94
I was hoping for a lot more with this chocolate, but sadly it was overly sugary which really took away a lot of potential for this bar. Any flavor that presents itself makes a quick appearance and then quickly dissipates. It's a shame because I really wish those fantastic, deep, woody characters would have stuck around.
Conching for 120 hours seems like a good a idea, but not if you conch all the flavor right out of your bar and you make up for it by overloading it with sugar. For all the information they give you about how rare these Trinitario beans are, you would think they would want you to actually taste them.
However, those with a super sweet tooth will really dig this chocolate bar. This is not for chocolate purists, but more for those who want to crush a hankering something really sweet.
Final Score: 91
B+
65% Dark 96 Hour Conching
Type: Bittersweet, 65%
Bean Varietal: Trinitario, Hybrids
Ingredients: Cocoa Mass (minimum 65%), sugar, soy lecithin.
Sample Size: 35g or 1.23oz
Lot #: 10188
Appearance: Slightly more banged up than the other bar and the same big crack at the bottom. Still shiny none the less despite the nicks and marks on the bar. Intricate molding with no lined patterns.
Score: 90
Snap: Slightly more firm than the 120. Better snap sound, but still fairly subdued. Asymmetrical break lines, but clean.
Score: 91
Aroma: Much softer nose, green, flowery, roasted cacao, subdued berries, mildly inky, very, very slight hints of cinnamon.
Score: 92
Taste: A lot less sugary than the 120, slight pop of acidic notes, but quickly leaves the palate, lighter wood character, bigger dried fig and raisin taste, finishes a lot more mellow than I would have expected.
Score: 93
Texture: Very smooth and silky, medium melt time.
Score: 93
Once again, I expected more from this chocolate. It's fairly tame, although the figs and dried fruits presented themselves more significantly. But the woody characters were muffled. They come out for a quick pop, but then went away quickly. There is a slight acidic taste right up front with this chocolate, but that too goes away quickly. I didn't have time to recognize if it was grapefruit like their packaging suggests you might taste.
I liked this bar better, but only marginally. Flavor wise it was much better and far less sugary than the 120.
I liked the stark contrast in the aroma's between this and the 120, and there is a fairly significant difference in taste, but I was hoping for bigger contrasts. Enough that makes sense on why they would do a 120 and a 96 hour conching.
It could be that these conching times make sense when tasting the chocolate right then and there. But allowing it to sit in weak packaging may have lost some of the intended flavors.
Final Score: 91.8
B+
So what happened to this chocolate? It could be a few things. There might be an over emphasis on just how good or rare these beans are from St. Lucia. There is a gimmick for new islands, new locations, new origins. Despite there being a long history with St. Lucia and cacao, there isn't a whole lot of products with these island beans. There may be an attempt to make this sound more exotic or more fantastic than it really is. Like emphasizing long conching times.
Or the extended conching really is a wonderful tactic, but the flavors are so delicate or the intended effect doesn't have longevity.
Not that this isn't good chocolate. It's fairly solid, but perhaps some more skills and less gimmick is required to make these cocoa beans really shine.
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