An authentic tree-to-bar chocolate experience awaits you at Belmont Estate. Not only do we grow, harvest, ferment, and dry some of the finest cocoa beans in the world, we also produce our own chocolates, cocoa powder, traditional cocoa balls, and cocoa butter.
Indulge in the unique flavours of our luxury brand of fine organic single-estate chocolate. Our small batch production focuses on quality. The very finest beans are selected to craft a delicious, healthy and enjoyable chocolate experience. Made with passion, our chocolate is โagedโ for three months to release astringency,
accentuate the intrinsic delicate cocoa notes and balance the flavours to perfection.
Learn more about organic cocoa production here:
Our organic cocoa is harvested by sniping the colourful oval shaped pods off the trees using mitten-shaped knives (called cocoa knives).
At our fields, the pods are heaped into piles and cracked with a cutlass or machete and the white beans (seeds) removed and placed into buckets or bags for transportation to the fermentation point.
At our Fermentary, the beans are placed into a sifter where excess water is drained out and debris (leaves, stones, broken pods) are removed.
The beans are then weighed and placed in large wooden bins (fermenting boxes), covered with banana leaves and jute bags.
The beans are fermented for 5-7 days during which time the white pulp covering the beans, disappears, the beans turn a rich shade of brown and flavour develops.
The beans are turned from one box into another every two days to allow an even distribution of the heat that is produced during fermentation.
Once fermented the beans are placed outside for 6 or 7 days to dry in the sun on big wooden trays or in our solar/convection drying facility built by Mott Green of the Grenada Chocolate Company.
During that period, employees walk through the beans to allow air to flow evenly through the beans, to aid the drying process.
Formally, the beans went through a cosmetic process called โpolishingโ to removes any dried pulp residue on the seed, and give the bean a smooth, polished look. Traditionally, this was done by dancing on them in large copper pots and in more recent times the beans were polished mechanically by machines.
Learn more about our chocolate making process here:
Hand Sorting - Our beans are hand sorted up to five times at our fermentary to remove defective beans and foreign matter ensuring that only the very highest quality beans are used for the roasting process.
Roasting โ We carefully check the moisture content of our beans then they are carefully roasted with even, well distributed heat, over a period of time to bring out the aromas and flavours that are intrinsic to our chocolate.
Cracking & Winnowing - Our beans are then broken into small pieces (nibs) and the shells is separated from the nibs during winnowing. The shells are used in our compost and the nibs are used to make chocolate, cocoa balls, cocoa powder and cocoa butter and we also offer them for sale as a healthy snack.
Grinding and Conching โ Organic nibs are ground to a paste and sugar is added to make our dark chocolate; while organic milk and cocoa butter added to make our dark โmilkโ chocolate. The grinding and conching is done for 72 hours, breaking down the size to about 20 microns and allowing the volatile acidic flavours to dissipate. The final chocolate paste is set into 5 kg blocks and put aside in our aging room to mature.
Aging - Aged chocolate is a fairly new phenomenon that equates to aging wine, whisky or cheese. Our chocolate is aged for about three months, in order to remove any other volatile flavours and to allow the chocolate to mature and develop a well-rounded flavour profile.
Tempering โ Solid chocolate blocks are melted/heated and cooled to specific temperatures in our tempering machine. This results in stable chocolate crystals, a crisp snap, smooth silky texture and a glossy shine. Our chocolate makers also hand temper our chocolates.
Moulding & Wrapping โThe tempered chocolate is moulded into our distinctive Belmont Estate bars, cooled and set, and carefully inspected for quality and defects. Bars are then diligently hand wrapped in gold foil and placed into specially designed boxes, ready for you to enjoy.
