We spend a lot of time ensuring that our coffee is top quality and fully traceable, paying fair prices, utilising experience and skill in the roasting and brewing process. We found Islands Chocolates does the same thing with their chocolate - promoting and advocating for a credible, sustainable and fair supply chain.
With so many similarities between cocoa and coffee we are excited to partner up. This chocolate is next level delicious as a hot chocolate.
Coffee & Chocolate production
Cocoa supply chain
A commercial cocoa supply chain touches between 7 and 10 different hands. Raising questions around how a product can be traced back, how ethical assurances can be provided and who did the cocoa come from in the first place.
Islands manage every step of the chocolate journey, being both cocoa farmers and chocolate makers. With their own farms in St Vincent and partner farms in the Dominican Republic they treat their cacao with care and respect - every tree is nurtured from seed, pods individually hand harvested, beans carefully fermented and dried to curate the finest flavour, quality Caribbean cocoa.
St Vincent Cocoa
The team behind Islands Chocolate started directly farming in St Vincent in 2011, with the goal to contribute to the regeneration of the agricultural industry in St Vincent. In the 1950s there were a handful of cocoa farms and a thriving banana trade before it crashed in the 1980s. The island offers fantastic growing conditions for cocoa; tropical climate, cool ocean winds, nutrient rich volcanic soil and shady valleys. These days they have 400 acres of cocoa and 120 employees, working in an agroforestry system which is designed to improve flavour through sustainable practices.
The cocoa from St Vincent is used in the chocolate buttons.
Dominican Republic Cocoa
The Islands Team needed more cocoa, and teamed up with a local farming collective and cocoa bean processed in the Dominican Republic. The Carribean terroir lends itself to cocoa production, with volcanic soil, ideal growing conditions, cocoa genetics and high farming standards which are largely organic.
The cocoa is used for hot chocolate powder and the cocoa butter used in the chocolates.
