Venezuelan vacation
More on the family
run Hacienda Bukare
Hacienda Bukare is by no means the
largest on the peninsula, but Billy's
entrepreneurial
talents have added a small factory to
the successful guestrooms and tours.
The business employs a handful of locals
to
process the harvested beans, and transform
them into a variety of chocolate products.
Waving goodbye to
'family chocolate'
The entire Esser family is involved
in producing new varieties of chocolate,
and as a guest I become necessarily
caught
up in the tasting process. On arrival
I'm presented with an austere china
cup containing, quite simply, the
best hot-chocolate
I've ever tasted. It's so good that
I realise, with a certain sad resignation,
I have permanently problematised my
relationship
with Galaxy chocolate.
Billy
Esser takes a tutorial at Bukare
More than a business,
it's a way of life..
When not involved
in production, it is Billy's father
(also named Billy), who conducts guided
tours
amongst the flowering cocoa groves.
But excepting the small flow of tourists
through
the farm's four guest rooms, life
for the family is traditional - including
the total pervasion of cacao.
Hot
or
cold chocolate drinks are taken
for breakfast,
for afternoon relaxation, or for
medicinal purposes. Cocoa butter is
used to
treat every burn or scratch, and criollo
trees
lean into the balconies, like swaying
interlopers. Even the surrounding
region boasts a cuisine entirely indebted
to
the seductive scents of chocolate.
If the peninsula made T-Shirts for
tourists, they would probably read "I've been to
Paria - Cadbury World eat your heart out".
...for the whole community
The
obsession stems partly from a pride
in the type of cocoa grown here. Criollo
cocoa is vaunted as the best flavoured
cocoa, with the least bitterness.
This
tiny stretch of land accounts for five percent of the world's cocoa production,
almost all harvested by manual labour, and quite often by families. And one
hundred percent of this output is transformed
into superior or luxury chocolate. Whilst
most English chocolate is made from hardier African breeds, this pure strain
of cocoa is still highly prized as the "original" cacao - the only variety
known to chocolate's first consumers, the Aztecs and Maya.
Chocolate
tasting and the rest.. Next >>>
© 2004 Catherine Quinn & seventypercent.com
