At Easter I overindulged a bit after my daughter-in-law
Michelle bought me a box of Belle Fleur chocolates: beautiful to look at and
simply delicious to eat. Despite the French name, these chocolates are local
from Belle Fleur’s Darling Street, Rozelle shop in Sydney, near where Michelle
works. When I contacted the company, they promptly told me their story and sent
the appealing photos you see here.
In following up, I caught a glimpse of a growing boutique
industry in specialty chocolate making here in Australia; a promising
cocoa-growing industry in Mossman in north Queensland; and a move towards the
production of high-quality cocoa beans on the islands of Vanuatu. Yes, fine
chocolates are becoming a ‘home and local’ product.
Let me tell you the story of Belle Fleur. Claire ter Heerdt
was prompt in getting back to me to say that Belle Fleur is a small family
business, started in 1984 by her father, Jan ter Heerdt. Jan had moved from
Belgium to Australia in the 1970s and begun working in the restaurant business.
His father, Bernard, would come to Australia on visits and show Jan how to make
Belgian-style handmade chocolates. Jan left the restaurant business and started
Belle Fleur in 1984. Now Claire has trained under him and become a fourth-generation
chocolatier.
Belle Fleur uses locally sourced ingredients such as wattle
seed, macadamias and blue gum honey with the chocolate imported from Belgium.
At Koko Black in Melbourne there is a similar story of
expertise and adventure. It began with the dream of Shane Hills to become a
pioneer chocolatier and he moved to Solingen in Germany to learn the art of
making chocolate from beans. Shane continued his quest in Bruges, in Belgium,
where he met skilled chocolatier Dries Cnockaert. Dries was interested enough
in Shane’s ideas to come to Melbourne to help him create the start of Koko
Black’s signature chocolates. Their first chocolate salon opened in 2003 and
has grown into a Melbourne enterprise employing 350 people. Koko Black recently
moved to Sydney, with one of their salons in the beautiful Strand Arcade in the
city.
From Koko Black it’s only a short stroll past the Strand
boutiques to Haigh’s Chocolates, an Adelaide specialty firm of chocolatiers whose story
goes back 100 years to when Alfred E. Haigh established the business on 1st
May, 1915. Not just a South Australian institution, Haigh’s are today Australia’s
oldest and best-established makers of specialty chocolates, producing over 250
varieties.
Haigh’s are committed to sustainable cocoa farming and have
become involved in improving the quality of cocoa beans grown on the islands of
Vanuatu, our Pacific neighbours. Cocoa has been grown in Vanuatu for many years
and the raw beans generally sold on the Singapore market for mass-produced
chocolate. Now, with recent Australian involvement, Vanuatu growers are being
introduced to farming beans to meet the requirements of a high-quality
specialty market.
In north Queensland, too, cocoa growing is now an increasing
specialty. Local farmers such as the Puglisi family have invested in trees and
found cocoa ‘surprisingly quite easy to grow’. At the Puglisi farm adjacent to
the Daintree forest, wild pigs used to be a problem in the sugar cane. But
apparently the pigs have no interest in cocoa trees.
People in north Queensland do, however. The farmers, already
sugar cane growers, have invested in cocoa trees as they see diversification as
an investment in the future. There has been early development finance from the Federal,
Queensland, Northern Territory and Western Australian governments and,
initially, from Cadbury Schweppes.
Today, local growers have joined into the cooperative
Daintree Estates and produce their own single-origin, estate-origin cocoa and
chocolate, from beans fermented and dried on one of the estates. The growers are
committed to sustainable farming and use local sugar and dairy ingredients in their
finished products. The investment is already providing a boost to local Mossman
businesses and communities. A chocolate, anyone?
