Club News D165

Club News

The monthly newsletter from the Tasting Club

Issue 1308

Solid

Foundations Q. W hat’s the best way to build a medical centre in Osuben, Ghana?

A. Let the rain do it!

See page 7

“Paradise truly exists” Club Members report back on the 2nd Exclusive Club Members’ Week at Rabot Estate in Saint Lucia.

Turn to page 14

Cuthbert Monroque and his team who conduct the tour at Rabot Estate.

Bean there done that On his trip to Rabot Estate last month, Club Director Terry Waters joined the 4-hour “Bean to Bar Experience”, something nearly all the Club Members who took up the special holiday offer earlier this year had done.

What did he make of it?

1308NL

There are few places in the world you can experience cocoa like this. The tour is run by Cuthbert Monroque, a key member of Rabot Estate since February 2011. Twelve people joined the tour and I saw a similar number taking part every day. Cuthbert started by explaining how the estate had been mapped... continued on page 8...

Ghana Appeal Target:

£45,000

Current Amount:

£25,696

If you would like to contribute to the Appeal to fund the Osuben Medical Clinic (CHPS).

Please send a cheque for whatever amount you can give made payable to: The Cocoa Farmers’ Fund, and send to: CTC Ghana Appeal, FREEPOST ANG10659, Royston, SG8 5YD.

Letter from the guest

Editor

CONTENTS Page 1, 8-9

Saint Lucia: Bean there done that

3

Cocoa countries: Venezuela

4

Prize draw results

4

Last call: Tuck Box

5

New special: Excellence

6

Focus: Purist selection

7

Ghana: Medical centre update

10-11

Monthly box scores & feedback

12

New special: Winter puddings

13 14

News: The Great Cherry Deluxe Debate News & results: Members’ week

14

News & results: Fortified 12

15 News:

The Rabot 1745 collection

Send your letters to The Chocolate Tasting Club, Mint House, Royston SG8 5HL, or simply email editor@ hotelchocolat.co.uk or via our website: www.chocs.co.uk.

We are waiting to hear from you!

Contributors: Iain Ball, Judy Buckley, Simon Thirlwell, Terry Waters Design: Andy Linney, Sarah McKewan © The Chocolate Tasting Club plc 2013

2

O

ur guest editor this issue is Angus Thirlwell, the CEO and co-founder of Hotel Chocolat and the Tasting Club.

One of the original seedlings from which the Tasting Club flourished in 1998, Angus remains as committed and deeply involved as ever.

The Cherry Deluxe saga or ‘Cherrygate’ as we now call it (full details on page 13), brought me into direct contact with some very passionate emotions. Whilst it created a surge of adrenaline to put it right, it also made me reflect that we are extremely fortunate to have such loyalty and deep-seated feelings for our chocolates. In our personal lives we always show the strongest emotions (positive and negative) to those we care about the most, and we certainly will never take that for granted.

In the same vein, I received a fabulously mordant letter from one member, reminding me of the failed Ford Edsel, the failed Coke Classic, the failed "rebranding of the blue chips in the 1980s" and then asking why I had felt it necessary to change the winning Cherry Deluxe.

The Japanese have a name for continuous selfimprovement – ‘kaizen’ – and it’s true that we naturally act like this, never wanting to rest on our laurels and always seeking to improve a little every day. More often than not we get it right but when we don’t we will always listen!

Also in this issue, we have a spotlight on the Purist Tasting Box, soon to become the Rabot 1745 Tasting Box. I will come right out and say that I love all our Tasting Selections, but this one I love the most! It really does enable us to take chocolate closer to fine wine, with the nuances of terroir and cacao gene type there to explore in the simplest recipes with the very, very best ingredients. But then again my wife prefers the Fortified Selection, so ‘chacun a son gout’!

Angus Thirlwell Club Founder & Guest Editor

GUEST EDITORSHIP

will be from a wide cross-section of people in the club’s orbit – fellow cocoa growers, eminent people in their field, leaders with a point of view, club members with an interesting angle and the occasional celebrity member. To nominate or apply for a future Guest Editorship, drop us a line editor@hotelchocolat.co.uk

What does cocoa mean to…

venezuela

VENEZUELA

Our new Rabot 1745 Venezuela Chuao 70% Dark is made using the nation’s finest cocoa.

Venezuela is sometimes called the “Bordeaux of cocoa” for its prized and highly sought-after beans.

Its native Criollo beans – the rarest, most subtle and complex cocoa variety – are by far the most difficult to farm and command premium prices for their unique flavours, with hints of almonds, caramel and brown sugar.

Despite the demand, Venezuela’s national cocoa output remains small, at less than one per cent of global production. Once the country’s main export, cocoa declined after Venezuela struck oil at the start of the 20th Century. Large estates vanished, and cocoa growing is now done mostly by small co-operatives. One of the most famous is the remote 16th Century village of Chuao, in the Aragua valley to the north.

Its 140-hectare plantation can only be reached by boat or by walking across the Cordillera mountains.

Life in Chuao is cocoa, and has been for over 300 years. Here, 125 farmers grow just 20 tons of Criollo beans a year, taking advantage of the high humidity and heavy rains that wash fertile silt into the valley from the mountains. Locals employ ingenious dams and irrigation systems made with banana leaves, and dry their beans on a plaza in front of the village church.

As you can now discover through our Rabot 1745 range, the result of their labours is spectacular. We bought five per cent of their harvest for our chocolatiers to produce a bar of 70% dark – a prima donna of chocolate, with flavours of cream and caramel, malt, raisins and roast nuts. Find out more about our new Rabot 1745 range on page 15.

Prize Draw CHOCOLATE

scorers’

Let us have your scores online or by post and you’ll automatically be entered into this Prize Draw every month to win Hotel Chocolat goodies!

Classic Selection Our prize draw winner Sophie Maxey from Broadstone who wins a Sleekster Praline Selection. Next month’s prize is a Sleekster Caramel Selection.

Dark Selection Our prize draw winner is Mrs Joan Keen from Colchester who wins a Sleekster Dark Selection.

Next month’s prize is a Dark Chocolate Dipping Adventure.

Elements

Selection

Our prize draw winner Miss Judith Cummins from Milton Keynes who wins a Cookie Choc Chip Slab.

Next month’s prize is a Eton Mess Giant Slab.

Purist

Selection

Our prize draw winner is Mr Logan Foskett from Hampshire who wins some Rabot 1745 rare and vintage bars.

Next month’s prize next month prize is a selection of Saint Lucia Island Growers Bars.

All Milk

Selection

Our prize draw winner is Miss Janet Newell from Grimsby who wins a Sleekster Milk Selection. Next month prize is a Milk Adventure Peepster Box.

DOn’t be late FOR SCHOOL! Don’t miss the chance to rekindle the excitement of all the classroom favourites you grew up with. The Tuck Box Collection is a one-off, loving recreation of all our much-loved playground classics, now re-imagined with premium ingredients for grown-ups.

This time around, all those memories of your first-love chocolates will taste even better! Delve in to the Tuck Box’s unique school lunchbox package and discover five new versions of Great British classics, including the oozingly soft caramel RollOver, served in a mellow milk chocolate cup, and the delicate, feuilletine-textured wafer fingers of the Snip-Snap. There’s plenty to be had, so don’t worry about sharing your Cinder Toffee, Crumbly Fudge and Cornflake Tray Tablet with the other kids!

There are also 12 Golden Scorecards hidden in special boxes. Find one, and you will win one of 12 extremely rare Steiff Bears – limited-edition collectibles worth £180! Get your lunch box and go back to school!

Last chance to reserve your place for just £18.50 (plus £3.95 P&P) at www.chocs.co.uk/tuckbox or call 08444 933 933.

SCORING IS EASY & FUN – 4

do it online at www.chocs.co.uk or pop your scorecard in your payment envelope!

EXCELLENCE And the award for best chocolate goes to…

Every year, we give our highest-scoring chocolate celebrities a place in the limelight, in the Excellence collections.

Lift up the lid and gaze upon our most admired and desired divas, wrapped in luscious darks, milks and whites.

The Excellence collection – The only award ceremony where the acceptance speech is always:

“Mmmm…”

Check yours is reserved for delivery in October £16 (plus £3.95 P&P) www.chocs.co.uk/MEMBER or call 08444 933 933

PURIST

The purist selection, with the new Rabot 1745 box centred.

Creating the Purist Selection was something we really believed in.

For us, experiencing and sharing the intense flavours of rare and vintage cocoa is the pinnacle of the chocolate tasting journey, which begins for all us as children. We grow up with chocolate, usually a bar of sweet milk chocolate with a lot of sugar, and our understanding of the cocoa experience starts there..

But we all grow up. Hotel Chocolat chocolate’s mission has always been to use less sugar and more cocoa in both milk and dark – even in our white chocolate. Once you hit that high-cocoa flavour, as Tasting Club members will know, it’s a case of once-bitten, always smitten. And once you’ve experienced that, you may start to wonder if an even deeper and more nuanced world of cocoa awaits…

Introducing that world is the goal of the Purist selection. Expanding our experience and educating the palate is the aim of Purist, opening the door to high-cocoa experiences from harvests and varieties from around the world, each unique, each with its own character, quirks and stories. It was introduced in the spring of 2011 and has remained the 6

smallest of the selections but has the most loyal members.

The original Purist concept was the inspiration for our Rabot 1745 range, which has exactly the same mission. The range uses the name of our own cocoa estate as a badge of honour for the finest single-origin cocoa from around the world. Soon, we’ll be changing the name of the Purist selection to Rabot 1745 to reflect that shared vision, while maintaining the same content, both in quality and quantity.

VITAL STATISTICS Launch date: February 2011 Share of membership: 1.6% Total number of boxes shipped: 27,637

The Osuben Medical Centre in Ghana is being built with the aid of traditional methods – using laterite soil compacted by the summer rains.

The

medical centre update

The work on the medical centre in Osuben is going well and remains on schedule.

The outer and internal foundation blocks are complete. The next step is to fill in with laterite before adding the top layer of concrete.

Laterite is a soil type with a high percentage of iron and aluminium and is typically red in colour from iron oxide. It’s a common building material in Africa and south-east Asia where it is plentiful and predictable summer rains can be used to compact it naturally.

This is why it was so important to get the first work on the medical centre completed before the end of May and the start of the rainy season.

All the drainage plumbing pipes are now in place prior to compacting, and although the foundations looks like a child’s sandpit right now, after the rains they will become rock-solid and ready to take the heavy concrete base.

off the total funds needs to complete the building and provide the equipment. So if you haven’t already contributed it would be wonderful if you could do so now. If you already have, then our thanks and if you do feel able to make a further donation that would be even more wonderful!

Contributions should be made by cheque made payable to: The Cocoa Farmers’ Fund and sent to CTC Ghana Appeal, FREEPOST, ANG(10659), Royston, SG8 5YD. Please indicate if you require an acknowledgement of receipt.

Whatever you send, we and the people of Osuben will be very grateful.

So our foundations for the Medical Centre are on the way, but we are still some way 7

cover story – continued

“

Bean there done that Time to make chocolate: Grind the nibs in a mortar and pestle, add sugar and cocoa butter and grind, grind, grind...

...Trees from all the various côtes (sections of the estate) were tested at Reading University in Berkshire to create a gene bank. From this we know their traits – which ones give the largest crop, which are the most robust, and which give the best cocoa.

Cuthbert showed how the pods were harvested. Lower ones can be picked by hand, but the secret is to twist the pod off, not pull, to avoid damaging the tree. For higher pods there’s the cocoa knife – a long wooden pole with a sharpened metal hook and a straight blade at the end. Several members of the group tried this successfully.

We then moved on to the fermentation section. Cuthbert removed a pod husk and showed us the beans inside – they looked white, covered in a milky, gelatinous pulp.

We were allowed to take a bean and suck it.

It tasted like lychee.

“Don’t bite it,” he cautioned, “or swallow – otherwise you’ll be having chocolate tomorrow morning!”

We then saw how the wet beans were loaded into wooden fermentation boxes where they would spend five days being turned by a simple wooden panel once every day or so. They heat up naturally and ferment.

After fermenting, the beans are a pale brown and are spread on drying tables where they are sorted for size and quality. The drying takes one to three weeks, depending on the weather.

”

If it rains the beans must be covered or the dampness can ruin the beans with fungus.

Then we grafted cocoa seedlings. Grafting is essential in cocoa growing for getting the most best quality beans: You take cuttings from mature trees with the genetic characteristics you want and graft them on to root stock seedlings. Just cut a ‘V’ into a seedling above its lowest bud, put the desired cutting into it, and bind them together with tape. Each grafted seedling is labelled and its position in the estate noted, so if you return you will see your tree.

Now came the “Bar” part. We went to the Estate House veranda, where a jar of cocoa nibs awaited. Cuthbert explained that, after drying, the beans are roasted and crushed and the outer shell removed by winnowing, leaving the “nibs”. Time to make chocolate: Grind the nibs in a mortar and pestle, add sugar and cocoa butter and grind, grind, grind. It’s a long process. Eventually we all created a smooth – smooth-ish – chocolate paste which we poured into a Hotel Chocolat slab mould, which then went into the refrigerator.

Two hours later, we were given the result, and it tasted better than I ever imagined.

There was a graininess to it that just added to the authenticity. Everyone agreed it was a great experience and I thoroughly recommend it if you visit Rabot.

From top-left clockwise into the centre – Using the 12-foot cocoa knife; Cuthbert checks the temperature of the fermenting box; team Cuthbert; the start of the grind, grind, grind; taping the graft on the seedling; “Now watch me closely”; a helping hand is there every step of the way; the end of the cocoa knife showing the blade and hook arrangement; Cuthbert reveals the clustered beans inside the pod; the low-tech fermenting box stirring technique; at last chocolate is poured into the mould… and Terry licks out the bowl (Well, everyone else was doing it!).

9

scores

Classic Selection – D161 No. Chocolate Name

Chocolatier

10/10

Average

1

Smoother Gianduja

Olivier Nicod

28%

8.4

2

Billionaire’s taste off (left cavity)

Olivier Nicod

25%

8.6

3

Piedmont Praline

Rhona Macfadyen

24%

8.1

4

Billionaire’s taste-off (right cavity)

Olivier Nicod

23%

8.5

5

Coffee Semifreddo

Kiri Kalenko

22%

7.6

Smoother Gianduja

DARK Selection – K94 No. Chocolate Name

Chocolatier

10/10

Average

1

Piedmont Praline

Rhona Macfadyen

28%

8.5

2

Arriba Crisp

Rhona Macfadyen

24%

8.5

3

Coffee Semifreddo

Kiri Kalenko

20%

8.5

4

Smoother Gianduja

Olivier Nicod

20%

8.3

5

Chocolate Brownie

Kiri Kalenko

19%

8.2

10/10

Average

Piedmont Praline

Elements Selection – S72 No. Chocolate Name

Chocolatier

1

Smoother Gianduja

Olivier Nicod

33%

8.9

2

39% Milk Chocolate

The Tasting Club

30%

8.5 8.3

3

Banoffee Pie

The Tasting Club

25%

4

Coffee Semifreddo

Kiri Kalenko

23%

8.3

5

Billionaires Taste-off (top cavity)

Olivier Nicod

23%

8.6

10/10

Average 9.2

Smoother Gianduja

purist Selection – p26 No. Chocolate Name

Chocolatier

1

Hacienda Flat White

The Tasting Club

66%

2

Sambirano Praline

The Tasting Club

33%

9.0

3

90% Dark Hacienda Iara, Ecuador

Kiri Kalenko

16%

8.5

4

75% Los Vasquez Dark Chocolate, Dominican Republic 66% Dark with Habanero Chilli, Madagascar

Kiri Kalenko

16%

8.6

Olivier Nicod

8%

6.5

5

Hacienda Flat White

ALL MILK Selection – M16 No. Chocolate Name

10

Chocolatier

10/10

Average

1

Lemon Caramel

Olivier Nicod

29%

8.5

2

Billionaire’s Taste-off (left cavity)

Victoria Elliot

27%

8.6

3

Smoother Gianduja

Kiri Kalenko

25%

8.4

4

Italian Blend Milk Batons

Kiri Kalenko

23%

8.1

5

Billionaire’s Taste-off (right cavity)

Olivier Nicod

23%

8.5

Lemon Caramel

feedback

Your Tasting Comments!

Advocaat Soother – CLASSIC Bouquet Surprisingly lovely. I don’t really like advocaat but this was subtle and delicious.

Lucy Buckley, Worksop Coffee Semifreddo – CLASSIC WOW!! Loved this one. It was like drinking a nice smooth coffee with a deep chocolate aftertaste that lasted and lasted. This is a winner.

David Griffiths, Carterton

Bouquet

Boozy Banana Smoothie – DARK Over-done on alcohol, very little banana flavour.

Tina Mullins, Norwich

Brickbat

Lemon Caramel – DARK Soothing caramel melted gently on the tongue, with a sneaky ‘peek-a-boo’ hint of citrus. Genius.

Clare Hockley, Stockton-On-Tees

Bouquet

90% Dark Hacienda Iara – Purist One of the best 90% chocolates I’ve tasted – very full flavour.

Could have had a whole box of it!

Jackie Gordon, Ringwood

Bouquet

Cheeky Vimto – CLASSIC Tastes like medicine!

N Holm, King’s Lynn

Brickbat

ARRIBA CRISP – MILK Disappointingly, the description is nicer than the chocolate.

Hazel Westlake, Banbury

Brickbat

Sipsmith Gin Sour – DARK This definitely tasted of Gin & Tonic and very strong but very nice.

Mr & Mrs Simon Norman, Dagenham

Bouquet

Coconut Citrus Salad – Classic Delicious, but I don’t know why! Must just be the way the flavours complement each other.

Mary Smith, Belper

Bouquet

Billionaires Round Square – Elements Slightly preferred the taste and texture of the original, however if I hadn’t tasted the original before it may have got the extra ½ point to take it to 10.

Michael Field, Coventry

Bouquet

Don’t forget – if we publish your letter you’ll receive your next tasting box FREE! Write to editor@hotelchocolat.co.uk or The Chocolate Tasting Club, Mint House, Royston, SG8 5HL

11

Winter Wonders To warm your heart Every cloud – even a wintry one – has a silver lining.

Give yourself a good reason to look forward to the chilly season and snuggle up with our second annual Winter Puddings collection – a deliciously cosy special edition filled to the brim with comforting chocolate recipes inspired by the heart-warming pies, puddings and tarts we all know and love.

Reserve your collection now for delivery in November for just £19 (PLUS £3.95 P&P) at www.chocs.co.uk/winter or call 08444 933 933

12

The great

Cherry Deluxe debate We hope that you know us well enough by now to know that our only mission in life is to make sublime, thrilling chocolates that just make you feel very, very happy. It appears that our work on improving the Cherry Deluxe, however, has stirred some deep feelings.

Here’s what happened...

For a long time our chocolatiers have wanted to improve the Cherry Deluxe. The cherry in the middle was a basic glacé cherry and we knew we could source a better quality ingredient. We found what we were looking for with a kirsch-soaked cherry directly sourced from a kirsch-maker in the Alsace region of France. More expensive, yes – better, certainly. The same as with our Piedmont hazelnuts – the quality is well worth the extra outlay.

We also want to achieve a perfect balance of 1⁄3 cherry, 1⁄3 ganache and 1⁄3 chocolate, so we used a new mould to make this work.

When it came to making the first batch, the cherries were much larger than the ones we had tried earlier. The wet summer had created naturally plumper cherries (exceptionally plump, apparently), and they wouldn’t fit the chocolate shell any more... Nature can’t be tamed!

although it has also brought in lots of new fans too.

After conferring with our chocolatiers and with several Cherry Deluxe fans, we have decided to go back to the drawing board and create a chocolate that brings together the best of both worlds: – a whole Alsace kirsch-soaked cherry, whatever the size!

– a thicker, double layer shell with dark chocolate on the inside and milk on the outside – a 1⁄3 each balance between cherry, ganache and shell Naturally, the Club will be the first to taste the ultimate Cherry Deluxe.

Watch this space!

We hand-cut the cherries in half, for this harvest, to make them fit into our chocolate cup, making a very nice but (honestly) not truly exceptional chocolate.

So, now we know that we have to allow for larger variations in size with such a natural product!

Although it is too early to read the scoring results from its appearance in a recent club tasting box, we can see that this version has created strong and passionate feedback, 13

news & results

News from

THE 2nd Exclusive MEMBERs’ Week The very first Exclusive Club Members’ Week at the Rabot Estate in May went well with some lessons learned along the way. So how did the second week go? Well, here are some of the messages to other Club members from the second group, and they were all good: • Fantastic experience to be here in St Lucia at the Rabot Estate.

• “A fantastic ‘hands-on experience’ not to be missed. Opened our eyes to the quality of the cocoa bean process and the ethical approach being taken by HC.” • “Fantastic location, varied activities and great staff, we really recommend the CTC week to all club members.”

• “We came with extremely high expectations and very pleased to say they were surpassed in every aspect.”

• “If you want to be part of a truly fantastic concept then this is the place to be. Paradise truly exists without warming the planet in any way and giving back to the locals in as many ways as possible. It was great to see so many people passionate about something they are doing on so many levels. So proud to be part of such a Club.”

• “This is truly a once in a lifetime experience, hotel is stunning, attentive and warm friendly staff, ethical and eco – but lacks nothing.

Not to be missed.”

• “Fabulous, fabulous, fabulous – but hot, hot, hot.”

• “Reading about Ethical Chocolate production is good but seeing it in action gives a whole extra level of appreciation and understanding.

Plus a week in a idyllic luxury surrounds is not to be missed.”

For more information on how to book, please refer to the back page, but hurry as places are limited – one member who came the first week has already booked!

14

the Results are in...

Fortified 12 The results are in for the 12th instalment of the quarterly Fortified Club selection, with a mix of classic and contemporary spirits and cocktails, made with the finest alcohols. Coming in third was a smoothly seductive ganache with peach and Amaretto, topped by a classic shot of Kentucky bourbon truffle – both beaten by a special martini made with espresso and premium vodka.

No. Chocolate Name

Chocolatier

10/10

Average 8.5

1

Espresso Martini

O Nicod

31%

2

Bourbon Truffle

R Macfadyen

30%

8.6

3

Peach & Amaretto

R Macfadyen

29%

8.5

4

Kraken Rum

R Macfadyen

27%

8.5

5

Molotov Cocktail

R Macfadyen

26%

8.6

6

Passionate Poire

F Plimmer

24%

8.4

7

Amber Elderflower

V Elliott

24%

8.2

8

Bonaparte Truffle

V Elliott

22%

8.6

9

Sipsmith Gin

K Kalenko

22%

8.3

F Plimmer

20%

8.4

10 Podlasie Vodka

Espresso Martini

Bourbon Truffle

Peach & Amaretto

update

“The Rabot 1745 collection – an exploration into the deepest regions of pure, single-origin chocolate from around the world...”

We’re very proud about the launch of our Rabot 1745 collection – our new range of exceptional, rare and vintage chocolates, offering a fresh and hugely rewarding experience of cocoa from around the world.

Just as with making fine wines, the terroir and heritage of different cocoa strains create distinctive chocolates with their own flavours and personalities. Around 80% of the flavour potential of chocolate is locked into cocoa by the time it leaves a plantation, created not just by variety, soil and climate but the way farmers grow, ferment and dry it.

times, conching times and temperatures used on each label.

The centrepiece of our Rabot 1745 collection is not just a single-estate chocolate, but a ‘single-côte’ chocolate. We think our Rabot Estate Single-Côte Marcial 70% Dark is the first of its kind in the world, taken from just one area of the terroir of our Rabot Estate, to produce a pure expression of our planation’s unique strain of Trinitario cocoa.

There’s a whole new world of cocoa out there to discover. Find out more about our Rabot 1745 range at www.hotelchocolat.com/rabot1745

Starting from our Rabot Estate plantation in the Caribbean, we’ve voyaged across the globe from Venezuela to Vietnam, Peru, Madagascar, Java and beyond to seek out the most rarest and most impressive cocoa harvests, each with a unique character and intriguing flavours.

Our master chocolatiers study each crop to decide which recipe does them justice, summoning elegant, aged-Burgundy notes in our Peruvian Pichanaki 75% Milk, and unleashing intense, dominating tones of espresso and leather in our Coastal Ecuador Hacienda Iara 100% Dark Organic. You’ll find the name of each chocolatier and the roasting

One of the The Rabot pocket collections left and our new monthly Tasting box above.

15

Bo at Lu * % t 25 ain er l, S ov e e Hot Sav n ca

u

cia

AN EXCLUSIVE OFFER FOR TASTING CLUB MEMBERS! 1st – 8th September 2013 and 29th September – 6th October 2013 The two Chocolate Tasting Club Weeks reserved for members at our Boucan Hotel in May were such a success we’re having two more.

Come and enjoy a blend of luxury, primal beauty and wellbeing at our stunning Rabot Estate plantation in Saint Lucia.

Stay with us for seven nights in a beautiful lodge for two, and enjoy an amazing discount of more than 25% .

Our Chocolate Tasting Club Weeks are packed with fine dining and fabulous Rabot Estate experiences – some created just for members – including: • A VIP airport transfer to the hotel and fresh cacao cocktail on arrival.

• A full breakfast, two-course lunch and three-course à la carte dinner.

• Two Cocoa Juvenate spa treatments.

• $100-a-day beverage credit per couple.

• Harvesting a cocoa pod, grafting, planting

(and naming) your own cocoa tree and learning the art of making chocolate from the experts in the magical Tree to Bar experience.

•A day on the hotel’s launch to the beach and nature reserve at Pigeon Island.

•E xperience cooking cacao cuisine with one of our chefs.

•A n exclusive Caribbean rum and chocolate pairing session.

• An Island Growers tour with local cocoa farmers.

Our gorgeous Lodges and Luxes come with fabulous four-poster beds and open-sky rainforest showers. When you’re not exploring the estate or enjoying the fabulous Boucan restaurant, relax in the infinity pool at Club Boucan, with its spectacular view of the twin Piton Mountains.

Book now for an experience you’ll always treasure, for a members-only offer of £3,000 for a Lodge and £3,700 for a Luxe for one of the new weeks!

Book now while places are available for an experience you’ll always treasure.

Call (UK) 0844 544 1272 (USA) 800-757-7132.

Email: reservations@thehotelchocolat.com.

Offer doesn’t include flights. *Full T’s & C’s at hotelchocolat.com/boucan.