Davao chocolate wins anew
In a press statement Thursday, chocolate maker Rex Puentespina, director for sales and marketing of the Malagos Agri-Ventures Corp., attributed the victory to the “hard work and dedication that the farmers put in the preparation of the cocoa bean before it even becomes chocolate.
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This has brought to five the company’s major international awards. The Academy of Chocolate awarded the company silver under Drinking Chocolate category for its unsweetened chocolate in 2016 and bronze under Best Unflavoured Drinking Chocolate in April 2015; the Great Taste Awards in London gave two out of three stars to Malagos unsweetened chocolate in 2016; and another silver for the Malagos Dark Chocolate won during World Drinking Chocolate Competition organized by the International Chocolate Awards in October 2015 in Hannover, Germany.
Puentespina said their “chocolates are tree-to-bar”, meaning the process of making the products, from planting, growing, fermentation, drying, sorting, roasting, and production, is done right at their farm in Calinan District where it runs its own Bureau of Plant Industry-certified cacao nursery at the foothills of Mount Talomo.
The company also supplies seedlings, seeds, and scions all-over Mindanao.
He said the tree-to-bar chocolates possess a more distinctive and pronounced taste as the chocolate can be traced back to the unique characteristics of the cacao beans.
“We grow Trinitario clones, a cross between the Criollo and Forastero varieties, specifically and predominantly the UF 18, BR 25 and PBC 123 clones. The beans we grow are considered as fine flavor beans. These beans are manually harvested then fermented on the farm to further enhance naturally the complex flavor of cocoa,” he said.
Being in agriculture for three decades, the Puentespina family went into chocolate business in 2012, with premium single-origin cocoa liquor as its first product until it branched out to Malagos 65%, 72%, and 85% Dark Chocolates, and Malagos Roasted Cocoa Nibs.
Its chocolates are exported to Japan, Thailand, Singapore, London, Australia, New York and other parts of the United States. (Antonio L. Colina IV / MindaNews)
