The Cocoa Research Centre creates a new suite of fine flavour products
Roughly 14 years ago, when the bean-to-bar movement was taking place in Trinidad and Tobago, the Cocoa Research Centre (CRC) at the St Augustine campus saw a responsibility to take a leadership role in that process.
Dr Darin Sukha, a food technologist and Research Fellow, was part of a close-knit team at the CRC who saw their potential role in developing the cocoa and chocolate industry in the country.
Using the annual European celebration of World Cocoa and Chocolate Day in October as a model, they began their own local version to raise awareness.
The advent of portable equipment like melangeurs (stone grinders) meant that making chocolate was no longer the bastion of big corporations, he said. “An enthusiast could buy a melangeur and some cocoa butter and say, ‘I’m going to make chocolate’.”
It was not difficult to garner interest. No surprise, given the global reputation of CRC.
“Trinidad and Tobago is regarded as the Noah’s Ark of Cocoa, being not only the home to the International Cocoa Genebank, the largest and most diverse cocoa collection in the world, but also the country of origin of Trinitario Cocoa, the basis of all fine flavour cocoas globally,” says Professor Pathmanathan Umaharan, a professor of genetics, who heads the CRC.
They entered the arena enthusiastically.
“We made a bar, refined it, and started our introductory chocolate-making classes every other month; and there was a waiting list!” says Dr Sukha. In 2013, they decided to expand the course content. The response was overwhelming. Housewives, wives of expats, helicopter pilots, engineers, accountants, cardiac surgeons, entrepreneurs, retirees — there was no fixed demographic in terms of gender, age, or profession.
The enterprise — to use the International Fine Cocoa Innovation Centre with its model orchard and pilot chocolate factory located at the University Field Station to train bean-to-bar chocolate makers and chocolatiers, teach business aspects, educate farmers on the best practices for growing cocoa, and to earn revenue — found approval from the Campus Principal, Professor Rosemarie Belle-Antoine, as it fit with the overall aim to become an entrepreneurial university.
“It’s part of The UWI’s effort to support the nation’s economic diversification thrust around cocoa — one of the few comparative advantages that the country possesses — and its varied value-added opportunities. We believe that through the establishment of an export- oriented, value-added outfit we can pull the entire cocoa industry forward: cocoa farms, cocoa-based agriculture- tourism, value-added SMEs producing a variety of beverages, patisseries, cosmetics and health products,” says Professor Umaharan.
“T&T as a country has built a reputation for its cocoa beans that is sought after globally with buyers prepared to pay a price premium like no other,” says Dr Sukha. “Our cocoa beans, however valuable they are, represent only 7 percent of the final value of chocolates. Selling cocoa beans therefore is like giving away part of the patrimony of the country.”
“The Spirit line of chocolates is our effort to build a globally reputed brand for the first time for T&T chocolates, beyond cocoa,” he says. This entails having the finest flavour, necessary consistency, a competitive price, food safety, volume of the product, a story and a strong marketing thrust, he explains. Additionally, we have the “wishing well” for solving some of the world’s problems with cocoa.
The business model is not just to sell bars, but chocolate in bulk as suppliers of final and intermediary products. Dr Sukha created a suite of chocolates: 100 percent, 80 percent, 75 percent and 55 percent. The original Spirit of Chocolate, a 70 percent bar derived from the Noah’s Ark (the Genebank), is available in smaller quantities.
But with the nurturing, noble spirit that is associated with the CRC, there came a dilemma. “We recognised that we had trained many chocolatiers and we did not want to compete with them,” he says, so they have limited their sales to The UWI community, starting with St Augustine and then to expand to Barbados and Jamaica. His goal was to create an experience that demonstrates the depth and range of Trinitario’s fine flavour potential. Hence the rebranding to Spirit.
Lead designer Dara Jordan-Brown came up with packaging that reflects the image of the CRC. She examined the global packaging of dark chocolate to get a feel for what is out there. She found images that were uncluttered and simple, and set to work, “knowing that it would have an international image, and I didn’t want us to be stark”. She wanted it to be elegant, and to reflect the Caribbean without succumbing to the stereotypical colours associated with the tropics.
She sampled the chocolates and as she savoured them slowly, she assigned each one a personality and then plucked hues from her colour palette. The 55 percent is the sweetest and got a blush; the 75 percent was festive and got a coral; the 80 percent was “stoosh” and got a light blue, the 100 percent was a haughty ‘I eat dark chocolate’ and got a teal. The 70 percent, the Noah’s Ark, got a regal gold.
She came up with a range that seems to suit the CRC’s suite so appropriately that it feels that she captured the spirit of chocolate perfectly.
This new line of chocolates truly marries the flavours that have defined the character of the Cocoa Research Centre and its high standard of excellence.
