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Sunday, November 22, 2020 Vol. 16 No. 45
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‘HAPPINESS YOU CAN EAT’ PHL ascends to the world stage in cacao, chocolate production
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By Manuel T. Cayon
AVAO CITY—There’s no better road to Philippine glory, at least in making the global royalty food— chocolate, that is—than to start it all in the farm.
This is the gem held dear by the caretaker-owner of the Malagos cacao farm, just at the back of the equally world-famous Malagos Gardens of cutflowers and orchids. Chocolate-maker Rex Victor P. Puentespina pointed to good farm practice and crop care as key to excellent cacao beans quality for fine chocolate products. “However good a chef, or chocolate maker…one cannot produce an excellent chocolate if the raw material itself is the problem.”
Global chocolate experts emphasized this to the exhibit team from the Malagos Agri-Ventures Corp., when they were surprised at the “very good and fruity flavor” of Philippine-made Malagos chocolates at the international trade fair in Berlin, Germany, in 2015. Puentespina said the chocolate connoisseurs in Europe were awed by the taste of the Malagos chocolates, the first of any Philippine chocolates in any global trade fair, and remarked that these have a lot of potential in
PESO EXCHANGE RATES n US 48.2790
the world market. “The opportunity would be opened wide further if there would be improvement in the fermentation process and post-harvest handling to develop good flavored chocolates,” he would recall later in that first international attendance of the company in an international chocolate fair.
Motivation
IT’S not the honor or the prestige that drove the Puentespina family to join the European and other international competitions. While these naturally come when judges and jurors recognize the product of diligence and care, the primary motive yet was to seek feedback and suggestions for further improving the Malagos chocolates. “People and experts would, of course, go around the booths and take a taste of your product. Some would leave, some would linger and give their feedback,” he told the
BusinessMirror on Wednesday. And so, on that first international foray, experts told them about exploring farm practice to produce good quality beans. Indeed, he said, “we agree and believe that the search for a fine and excellent chocolate product begins in the farm to produce that good product material.” Because the Philippines, especially the Davao area, already possessed that good genetic material, Puentespina focused subsequent actions onto good agricultural practice, and on post-harvest techniques in drying, grading and sifting through the good and bad beans, the ripe and overripe beans. That goes also for the farmers around its farm. Malagos chocolates do not solely rely on the cacao trees inside the 24-hectare farm in Baguio District. The cacao beans are also gathered from cacao farmers around. Continued on A2
REX with his mother Charita at the Puentespina Farm in Davao City. The farm is located in Malagos at the foothills of Mount Talomo, Barangay Baguio District.
n JAPAN 0.4655 n UK 64.0373 n HK 6.2271 n CHINA 7.3336 n SINGAPORE 35.9085 n AUSTRALIA 35.1809 n EU 57.3410 n SAUDI ARABIA 12.8744
Source: BSP (November 20, 2020)