Way back in Nelson I stumbled across a beautiful, glorious, and super expensive chocolate from a company called Wellington Chocolate Factory. I was very tempted to spend the money and get some, but in the end couldn't bring myself to do it. It was too much of a risk when I didn't know if I was going to like it for sure!
But then I found out that they offer tours of their factory in Wellington for only the price of one of their bars- and you get to taste all of the different kinds, and learn a lot, and get a hot chocolate at the end!
A group of 8 of us from the hostel (Me, Daisy, Amy, Martin, Carla, Lamara, Ana, and Hannah) decided to go on July 27th. I learned SO MUCH.
Cocoa seems to be a really tough industry- most are grown in Africa and a lot of workers live in near-slavery conditions. The beans are sourced through middlemen, and the WCF folk had a very hard time finding fair trade farms. But there are such farms, particularly in South America and tropical islands like the Dominican Republic and Samoa. Cocoa trees take a long time to grow unless genetically engineered, and each type of plant has the different types of flavors we tried.
Cocoa beans come from large pods. Inside the pods is a fruit, and inside the fruit is a pine-cone looking thing that is actually all of the beans. WCF gets the “pine-cones” all together and separates the beans themselves.
We got to taste the four of their eight kinds, and just, it's like no other chocolate I've ever tasted. Even “good” dark chocolate. It's definitely worth the money- especially when you know the farmers are getting a fair wage, and that it's preserving lots of different varieties of cocoa trees.
I think my favorite part of the chocolate, other than the actual chocolate, is the wrappers! SO beautiful. SO ARTISTIC. I want to buy one of each bar and frame the wrappers.
It's true that this blog post is basically an add for the Wellington Chocolate Factory. BUT I learned a lot about chocolate, which is my favorite thing, so it's worth putting up here. Also, the WCF is awesome so I don't even feel bad.
The everyone spent the rest of the day getting amazing burgers for lunch and having discounted cocktails at a bar on the water. Clearly it was the greatest day!