Times of crisis are times of great opportunity, so the Chinese believe. What opportunities will the crisis of a shortage of cacao beans from Trinidad estates bring to a cadre of 21st-century chocolate-makers? Pat Ganase surveys the industry.
“It is heart-breaking,” says Isabel Brash, “that cocoa production has been declining drastically over the last couple years. It is difficult to plan chocolate production and take orders for even a month in advance. The biggest season is fast approaching; for Christmas we start chocolate production in September.”
Over the past decade, the architect-turned-chocolate entrepreneur has built her business at the Cocobel chocolate house on Fitt Street, Woodbrook, using beans bought mainly from the Rancho Quemado estate.
She has also worked with beans from other estates – La Deseada in Santa Cruz, San Antonio and independent farmer Anand Narine – and enjoys telling the stories of the flavours from each region. Her chocolate went to Italy for the Slow Food festival in three consecutive years.
Caribbean chocolate
Trinidad and Tobago is one of six Caricom states (St Lucia, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica are the others) among the mainly Caribbean and South American countries that are recognised by the International Cocoa Organisation (ICCO) as producers of “fine flavour” cocoa.
For nearly 100 years, TT led the world in the research and development of the most widespread variety of cocoa now grown worldwide.
Trinidad’s signature variety, Trinitario, was developed at the UWI Cocoa Research Centre (then the Imperial College of Agriculture) and has cont3inued to generate the stock for higher yielding, disease-resistant, flavourful cocoa.
[caption id="attachment_1025280" align="alignnone" width="768"] Cocoa beans dry on the floor of a cocoa house with a sliding roof. -[/caption]
The Cocoa Research Centre (CRC) maintains the International Cocoa Genebank, Trinidad (ICGT) one of the world’s precious collections of cocoa plant material. The establishment of the collection began in 1982. Since 1994, over 2,000 types have been planted at a site in Centeno.
Cocoa history
At the height of its cocoa culture in the mid- to late 1800s, Trinidad is reported (according to Daniel Hart in 1865) to have had 14,238 acres under cocoa and coffee; over three million cocoa trees cultivated by some 700 owners/estates. Trinidad produced 20 per cent of the world’s cocoa, some 30,000 tonnes of beans, at the turn of the 20th century, mainly for export through the co-op system.
Today, we barely produce 500 tonnes.
Estates – some overgrown, some being rehabilitated – may be found all over Trinidad. In Tobago, sugar gave way to cocoa; Charlotteville and Hermitage were large estates in the northeast. Trinidad’s cocoa crops failed in the 1920s owing to disease. In Tobago, the pest was parrots, and, in 1963, Hurricane Flora.
New players, old agriculture
At the start of this century, chocolate-making ignited the imagination of young entrepreneurs in an island that had previously produced coc
