We’re delighted with our wins in the annual Great Taste Awards, especially as two of the chocolates are made only with cocoa from Saint Lucia – the first is our own Rabot Estate 66% Dark Chocolate and the second is our Island Growers 50% Milk with Caramel and Sea Salt. Both were awarded 2 gold stars by the judges.

The Great Taste Awards are acknowledged as one of the benchmarks of high quality food and drink in the UK and have been described as the ‘Oscars’ of the food world. Many consumers see the award as an independent seal of quality, which is why this year over 1,500 producers entered over 7,400 of their products for blind tasting by industry experts.

As you can imagine the team in Saint Lucia were thrilled, Phil Buckley, our Estates Director, said, “Winning awards like this is fantastic for putting the fine cocoa of Saint Lucia back on the cocoa map – where it belongs. These awards are also a just reward for the sheer hard work and dedication of our team at Rabot Estate and all of the cocoa farmers who are part of our Engaged Ethics cocoa programme. I can’t wait to tell them that their cocoa has won another prestigious award!”

Other wins included:

3 Stars – Kirsch Cherries

2 Stars – Rabot Estate St. Lucia 66% Dark & Island Growers St. Lucia 50% Milk with Sea Salt Caramel

1 Star – Liquid Chocolat Aztec Chilli, Raspberry Liqueur Truffles, Soft Salted Caramels & Dizzy Pralines

It must have been 1993 when we first started to think about making our first Easter egg. I called a few chocolate people to ask for advice. One of them was the UK’s, and possibly Europe’s, major egg spinner ‘What you want to do is make the shells as thin as possible and arrange all the stuff around the outside so the whole thing looks as big as possible’. Even then I found that a little distasteful and we decided to do the opposite – make the eggs ridiculously thick and fit all the stuff inside the egg. Fortunately our extra thick eggs caught on and we are still doing them 18 years later.

If only the talented engineers who have spent years perfecting the ultra thin egg (which you can sneeze through) had spent their time on something more useful to humanity. Turns out that the lead engineer was our very own Phil Buckley (Country Head of Saint Lucia) in the dark days before he became a convert to estate grown super premium chocolate!

We can reveal today some very exciting news – Hotel Chocolat has developed the world’s first milk chocolate cocoa beans by ‘watering’ our Rabot Estate cocoa trees with milk. This breakthrough means the beans can now be made directly into milk chocolate, without having to add milk to the recipe.

Chief Executive, Angus Thirlwell, said, “This is a much more efficient way to make milk chocolate and I’m delighted to reveal it to our customers first. There has only been one minor downside to date, but we think we may have overcome that problem already…”

Estates Director, Phil Buckley, who has been the driving force behind this huge step forward said, “It’s very quiet here in Saint Lucia during the off season, so we started experimenting to pass the time. Unfortunately, the rum-fed cocoa trees are looking a bit worse for wear, but the milk-fed trees have flourished.”

However, as already mentioned, there is a downside to watering cocoa trees with milk – the creamy aromas have attracted quite a number of cats to the estate.

Phil Buckley explains, “I’ve nothing against cats, but the mewing was driving us all mad. Luckily, it turns out our neighbour’s dogs are lactose intolerant, so they’re more than happy to chase the cats away. I’d like to say a big thank you to our neighbours up at the Poisson d’Avril Estate.”

More soon…

Final approvals just received from the Saint Lucian government for our bean to bar manufactory – it’s been a long and careful process because it is set within the Unesco World Heritage environment of the Pitons in Saint Lucia.

Our ‘renaissance man’ country head, Phil Buckley, has been working on the design plans for 3 years and they are amazing – it will be the world’s greenest chocolate manufactory, architecturally beautiful, focussed uniquely on rare and vintage cocoa and designed from the outset for visitors to fully engage in each sensorial stage.

Being sited amongst the cocoa groves on our own estate means that we will be able to make micro batches and fully release the unique terroir of Rabot Estate and Saint Lucia. Physically linking the growing and fermentation of cocoa with roasting and chocolate making means that our chocolatiers will have all the variables of flavour at their disposal – like a winemaker with his own winery set amongst the vineyards.

Here is the press release from the Saint Lucia government.