Pure Chocolate wins big on int’l stage
Earns gold medal in Cacao of Excellence Awards
Published:Thursday | July 18, 2024 | 12:08 AMShanel Lemmie/Staff Reporter
When pastry chefs Wouter and Renae Tjeertes began their adventure with chocolate in 2017, it was to bring back a piece of their life in St Lucia to Jamaica. Moving to the Eastern Caribbean island, the two learnt the intricacies of making chocolate. Ever the patriot, Renae wanted to bring that knowledge back to her home country Jamaica to work alongside her partner in both life and business, her husband. Now eight years into their endeavour, the entrepreneurs have secured for Jamaica a gold medal in the Cacao of Excellence Awards.
Founded in 2009, the competition stacks produce from cocoa farmers and chocolatiers against each other to determine and recognise the quality and diversity that they have to offer.
According to Shanika Newman, senior director in charge of cocoa, Jamaica Agricultural Commodities Regulatory Authority, the award is the most prestigious in the industry.
“In the world of cocoa, this is a big deal,” she began.
“Cacao of Excellence highlights the best cocoa producers in the world. This isn’t about chocolate, this is about producing quality cocoa beans. Jamaica is known for producing, we are one of the exclusive producers of fine flavour cocoa. But not just because you produce fine flavour cocoa means that your cocoa can stand up to the test of what chocolatiers want. So being a part of this competition where you have the world of cocoa, the world of chocolate, tasting your cocoa beans and putting it through stringent tests, the fact that you make it to the top 50 is a great achievement.”
EXPANDING JA’S CHOCOLATE INDUSTRY
At Pure Chocolate, Renae says one of their early mandates was to expand the pool of people that had a stake in the chocolate industry by teaching the process both through their chocolate-making experience and private classes with farmers.
“We wanted persons to come in and experience it because when we started this company in 2017, one of the things that was a big hiccup for us was that we had to train person on dark chocolate.”
For Wouter and Renae, they had prior experience in chocolate-making as pastry chefs but their trip to St Lucia upped the ante.
“What we normally do is buy [the] product and make chocolate. When we moved to St Lucia a couple years we learned how to two pick the actual fruits from the tree to make chocolate. We are pastry chefs of course so there’s always a love for chocolate from before but having that experience, learning how to take it from the fruit to the drying and making it into an actual chocolate bar was of course an eye-opening experience. Myself being the Jamaican, I thought we are doing this fantastic project in St Lucia, let us take this knowledge that we have and bring it back to Jamaica and of course help with this industry.”
She continued, “This was one of the ways to introduce persons to dark chocolate, to open their palates and help them understand what they are eating.”
REINVIGORATION
Though Renae said they have had their ups and downs citing that “COVID did happen”, this new international win has reinvigorated them.
“Once we heard that the competition was opening after COVID, we decided that ‘hey, everybody has raved about the chocolate bars, it would be good for us to see what our cocoa beans have to offer’. We also wanted the knowledge and the feedback from other persons out there to say ‘hey, what is happening with the cocoa that we have, is it as good as we think?’ Jamaica has fine flavour cocoa so it was a no-brainer for us to see if we’re on the right path [that] we think we were.”
After submitting their samples for review in 2022, Renae said it was a long process of waiting to see just how they would stack up against the World. Never expecting to receive top ranking, she explained that when they got the news that they were among the top 50 in the world, shock and awe was the order of the day.
“We just wanted to get some feedback because with these competitions they always send back [a] log to say whether or not you’re fermenting correctly. They always give you a breakdown, so we thought at least we’ll get the feedback from experts. My husband was on a trade show in the Netherlands, that’s where they announce the winners and I was at work in the chocolate shop in Ocho Rios. Everybody dropped what [they] were doing to watch the livestream so we could see. When I heard that we were in the top 50 I was like ‘okay this is what it is’. But when we heard that out of the top 50, we were awarded the gold in Latin America and the Caribbean, we were...,’” she said, trailing off. “We were emotional, overwhelmed, all the things.”
Now that the couple-ran business has been named a 2023 Cacao of Excellence Gold awardee, Newman says this will reopen the doors of the local cocoa industry.
“It does open doors for us. Currently as a nation we are battling a deadly frosty pod rot disease so that is affecting our production. Some persons are still wondering, ‘does it make sense for us to still do cocoa because production is now low.”
Citing that farmers who would typically make a living from touting their wares have lost [a] majority of the customers [who] upheld their business for the last 30 years, she said, “With us winning this award and even retaining our 100 per cent exclusive fine flavour producer title, it signals back to the world that Jamaica is still the best and it also [sends us a signal] locally, seeing that one of our local persons was able to win this award, it would then mean that the world of cocoa and the world of chocolate is looking to Jamaica for produce so our local farmers can get back into production because there is a market that wants our cocoa.”
As for the Tjeertes, with this global pat on the back, they have their sights set on expansion.
“We are just taking it as it goes on. Right now, we’re looking to expand because if we’re doing such an excellent job with the small production that we have, if we expand then we can do so much more which means so much more for the country.”