Each one is uniquely designed in an authentic plantation style, with madras accents, warm wood floors, rattan furnishings and vaulted, beamed ceilings that echo the property’s colonial heritage. Off white walls carry artwork by local artists, and many bedrooms have four poster beds.
Twenty five, spread across a working cocoa estate of about 135 acres in Soufriere, surrounded by rainforest canopy and tropical gardens.
Plas Cacao, our chocolate shop on the estate, sells what is made here.
Yes. The cocoa powder is 100 percent cocoa, free from artificial chemicals, and the estate itself is certified organic.
The chocolate comes out of the machine semi liquid, and is tempered on a large metal surface with two spatulas until it reaches the right consistency. It is then poured into moulds and refrigerated until solid. The finished product is 100 percent organic chocolate.
The dried beans are roasted for around forty minutes, cooled, then ground into a coarse mix of nibs and shell. A vacuum separates the shell out, the pure nibs are blended into a fine powder, and that powder is combined with cocoa butter and sugar and mixed for at least twenty four hours.
After the first two to three weeks of drying, the beans are coated in a mixture scraped from a young cocoa pod, then an estate worker steps barefoot into the cauldron and dances on them for thirty minutes. It polishes the beans, removes blemishes and makes them easier to shell.
The beans go onto drying trays in the sun for eight to ten weeks. If it rains they have to be wheeled back into the cocoa shelter straight away, because once fermented beans get wet they spoil.
Ripe cocoa pods are harvested and cracked open, and the sweet beans inside, which we call jungle M&Ms, go into fermentery boxes covered with boards and banana leaves. They ferment for eight to ten days while the natural bacteria and yeast break the pulp down into cocoa vinegar.
It follows the full journey from bean to bar on our working cocoa plantation. You learn the centuries old techniques, taste as you go, and take part in the chocolate making yourself.
