Hotel Chocolat has launched six new single-origin products, crafted in-house to showcase the distinctively fruity profile of single- origin cacao from their farming partners, Saint Lucian Island Growers.
Expressed as two grades – a malty, floral 50% and 70% with almond and cherry notes. Available only at Hotel Chocolat both in-store and online, the six new products are 50% Batons, 50% Drinking Chocolate, 50% Slab, 70% Batons, 70% Drinking Chocolate and 70% Slab.
The six new products are a celebration of cacao, grown using a method Hotel Chocolat call gentle farming – farming that is positive for nature and positive for farmers, helping both to thrive.
Wet beans are collected, then dried under the Saint Lucian sun on Hotel Chocolat’s cacao farm, this stimulates flavour development.
Back in the UK at the Cambridgeshire Factory, our in house couverturier’s then place the beans through roast & conch, recognising & setting the specific
roasting temperature and time required for that particular harvest to bring out the very best of its flavour.
These single-origin chocolate products allow you to achieve flavour profiles that’s would usually be achieved by adding flavours, this is due to the distinctive flavour profile of the bean.
For more information on the process behind this launch, Speciality Cocoa Chocolatier at Hotel Chocolat, Yiotis Panagiotou says:
“The launch of the Saint Lucian Island Growers range is an exciting launch for all those involved. By using beans from Saint Lucia, and being a single-origin chocolate, we have been able unlock different flavours, that cannot be achieved in house grade chocolate, making the launch of our Saint Lucian Island Growers range, distinctively different to any before.
We have worked with the farmers in Saint Lucia over the years and refined the process to ensure the crop has improved and have now created two grades, our 50% milk single-origin chocolate, and 70% dark single-origin chocolate. Working closely with the farmers in Saint Lucia has allowed us to implement our ‘gentle farming’ initiative to ensure we are making both people, and nature, happy through chocolate.
We wanted to put Saint Lucian chocolate at the heart of Hotel Chocolat, for both us, and our farmers, to benefit so we created the ‘Island Growers Programme.’ This programme means we buy their beans wet and do the fermenting and drying ourselves on our Rabot Estate Farm, in Saint Lucia. The beans are then bought to the UK and go through the Roast and Conch process in Hotel Chocolat’s Cambridgeshire Factory, when the fermented, dried cacao beans are roasted, the shell of the bean is removed to leave just a nib, refine the nibs into a flake, mill the flake into a chocolate and finally, conched.”
50% Batons – £8.95
15 batons made exclusively with cacao grown by our farmer partners, working alongside our cacao farm in Saint Lucia. Malty, fruity, floral.
70% Batons – £8.95
15 batons made exclusively with cacao grown by our farmer partners, working alongside our cacao farm in Saint Lucia. Red cherry and almond notes.
50% Drinking Chocolate – £14.95
10 single serve drinking chocolate sachets curated with 50% Saint Lucian grown chocolate.
50% Slab – £5.45
Malty notes of 50% milk unfold to reveal a fruity profile with floral undertones.
70% Slab – £5.45
70% dark, with a whisper of tangy red cherry enveloped by gentle almond notes.
