The Grenada Chocolate Company
The Grenada Chocolate Company was founded in 1999 as an Organic Cocoa Farmers’ and Chocolate-Makers’ Cooperative. The result was the first “Tree to Bar” chocolate of the century with all the value going directly into the local Grenadian economy – specifically the village of Hermitage, St Patrick's. This was a truly pioneering concept for the cocoa-chocolate system which, even these days, typically keeps cocoa production separate from chocolate-making and therefore takes advantage of cocoa farmers. The Grenada Chocolate Company believes that cocoa farmers should benefit as much as the chocolate-makers.
One of the founders of the company, Mott Green, often said “It takes a whole village to make a bar of our chocolate.”
Their factory now produces award-winning organic dark chocolate using the renowned Trinitario cocoa beans that grow right on the factory’s doorstep nestled in lush cocoa groves. Producing chocolate right where the cocoa grows allows the co-operative to do its own fermenting which gives a real advantage in creating the finest, most complex phenolic profile from the beans. The other important factor is that fresh beans are used to make the chocolate rather than ones that have been shipped halfway around the world.
Because small batch chocolate-making is extremely rare, The Grenada Chocolate Company had to create many of their own processing methods, designing specialist small scale machines and refurbishing antique equipment to meet the requirements of their unique situation. Most of the machines were designed in the early 1900s, harking back to a time when quality had precedence over quantity in the world of chocolate-making. Many of the machines have now been reconfigured to run on solar-electric energy.
