Vegetation grows very quickly in rainforest conditions. Preparing lands properly is vital to ensure plant survival and needs to be done carefully on steep slopes (up to 45 degrees) to minimise potential land-slides or soil erosion.

Originating from the amazon rainforest, cocoa needs to be established under a canopy of trees.  We plant shade cover in the form of gliricidia (quick growing), bananas (big leaf shade), and mahogany (great for tall cover) a year in advance.

Each seed is individually selected, tested for viability and then planted in a re-useable bag.  These beans will be our root stock, rather than the eventual tree (see ‘grafting’ later).

Once the plant is three months old, we take a piece of budwood from a selected tree in our gene bank to graft onto the plant. This produces a clone of the ‘mother tree’.  This ensures we know exactly what we have - the best.

Plants are then carefully tended in our nursery for another three months until they are strong enough to take to our farms or given to farmers for planting out.  We produce 3,000 trees every month for the six-month rainy season when we plant.

Cocoa plants are very fragile when young and need perfect conditions for their first few years.  It takes a lot of continual monitoring and maintenance to keep lands clean of weeds and insects.  We plant on our own lands as well as providing free plants for farmers joining our program.

It takes five to seven years for trees to reach full maturity, but being in a rainforest environment, they do grow very quickly (as do weeds!) and will need fertilising, pruning and cleaning every few months for the rest of their lives (25 - 50 years plus).

Pods are produced in meaningful quantities after 3 to 4 years.  Flowers are constantly forming and pods developing from them all year round.  They are picked by rotation every two weeks.  They are cracked in-situ so that their husks can be used as fertiliser.  The wet beans are taken to our processing facility at Perseverance.

Fermentation is the first essential stage of turning raw live beans into edible chocolate. Beans are quickly sealed in large one-tonne wooden boxes where naturally occurring yeasts, enzymes and bacteria take its pulp though an anaerobic then aerobic process of fermentation, reaching temperatures of up to 45 degrees, during which the sugars turn to acid. 

Before introducing to the drying house, we rinse off excess dried pulp from the still moist beans. This speeds up the drying process and prevents moulds developing, without damaging their thin fragile skins.

Once in the drying house, the aim is to reduce the moisture content from about 25% down to 6-7% so the beans can be stored, but not too quickly or they will dry on the outside before the internal moisture can escape. Beans are turned many times a day to ensure even drying. This process takes about a week, depending on weather conditions which can be very variable.

After a day of cooling down, beans are bagged in traditional hessian sacks and stored, ready for shipping.

The cacao is sent by slow boat in 20 ft containers, each holding 10 tonnes of beans.  It takes a full three weeks to reach Belgium.

Cocoa is passed through a machine to remove everything other than beans such as dried pulp, pieces of shell and impurities including bits of sacking or dust.

Beans are then sorted by weight to ensure an even roasting.

Beans are roasted to bring out their chocolatey aroma in large cylinder ovens. Being fine-flavoured, our beans are only roasted for one hour and at a lower temperature than normal, meaning more of the valuable flavanols are retained. Turning over in the cylinder ensures an even roasting, while all moisture is removed and the bean colour changes to a rich brown.  Roasting properly is key to producing great chocolate and is an art as well as a science.

To remove the shells, which are by now brittle from roasting, the beans pass through a machine which first gently cracks the shells then uses a series of sieves and fans to blow away the lighter shell fragments, separating them from the nibs.

The solid nibs pass through refining mills and because of the heat generated by the intense friction, they are ground into a paste which soon turns into a ‘liquor’.  The particles are still quite large at this stage and the flavour unformed.

This is an intense process of agitating, mixing and aerating the liquor over a period of about 8 hours, during which any off-flavours such as left-over acetic acid, bitterness and remaining moisture evaporate away. The particle sizes are gradually reduced until they are unrecognised by the human tongue. Meanwhile, the flavours enhance as the cocoa butter enrobes every single solid particle, giving the liquor a well-developed flavour and texture that is unique to chocolate. Again, the length of time of conching and its intensity are critical to the outcome.

Left to cool on its own, chocolate will have a dull, mottled, crumbly appearance and melt very easily.  To achieve a nice colour, shine, snap and melt smoothly in the mouth, it’s necessary to align the correct cocoa butter crystals. This is done by raising and then reducing the temperature of the chocolate to pre-set levels; a process known as tempering.

Once fully tempered, the liquid chocolate can be poured into its moulds or simply produced as buttons on a conveyor belt. The chocolate then needs to be cooled down to room temperature so that it solidifies.

The packaging machine wraps the chocolate, cuts the wrapper and seals it. Thereafter, the wrapped chocolates are packaged into cartons and stored until being sent to our warehouse in London for distribution.

Award-winning, delicious chocolate. Made ethically and responsibly. Melt-in-the-mouth, fruity and complex chocolate, perfect for snacking, baking and sharing.