Tobago Estate Chocolate – Roxborough 70%

About the bar

Made with Trinitario cocoa, this bar has a characteristic fruitiness and hints of blackberries and strawberries. Thanks to its high cocoa butter percentage, it has a clean snap and glossy smooth surface. It is milky and sweet but also intriguingly musty, with secondary flavour notes of brambles, leather and tobacco.

About the maker

Having grown up on the island of Tobago where his family had a small cocoa estate, Duane Dove always aspired to extend his family’s enterprise one step further and make his own chocolate from the cocoa beans he helped grow. Growing up, he went on to study Culinary Arts in Canada, then Wine and Spirits in Stockholm where he graduated as a Sommelier.

His culinary passions translate into his chocolate too. He’s written a book on chocolate and rum, and whilst being no food snob, loves pairing his chocolate with a glass of Australian Shiraz or other full-bodied wines from Northern Italy.

Duane got the idea of establishing his own cocoa estate in 2003 and consequentially returned to Tobago to find the land he would need. But the process of producing a chocolate bar from the beans he found – what he endearingly calls getting from ‘bean to belly’ – was harder than expected. Waging a war on a bamboo forest, Duane led an army of ‘cocoa soldiers’ to transform the land into a three star cocoa estate. Staggeringly, it then took ‘5 years, 150people, 1600 days and 56000 hours’ to make his very first chocolate bar.

For Duane, quality is the very top of his priorities. After deciding from day one that he wanted to create the very best artisan chocolate, he collaborated with friend and chocolatier Francois Pralus who is not only a chocolate expert, but understood the hard work needed to craft truly amazing bars from single origins and estates. All the beans used for Tobago’s bars are sourced from Duane’s own cocoa estate in Roxborough, Tobago and aren’t blended with those from any other farms. What results is chocolate made only from the best Trinitario beans.

Allergens*

No allergens listed by maker.

Ingredients

70% cocoa, sugar, pure cocoa butter, GMO-free soya lecithin

*Allergen advice: We directly import, and purchase, all products from independent makers and have these shipped by our partner warehouse (which is not certified allergen-free), and so we cannot guarantee that any product will be allergen-free. Even where an allergen is not listed, products may have been produced, shipped, or stored in facilities which handle allergens.

If you would like further information about a specific product, please contact us on [email protected] or contact the maker directly.