Dispatch 11: A Study in Contrasts

Today (Tuesday) we trod the grounds of the Agostini estate in the hills near Gran Couva. Phillip Agostini, representing the fourth-generation of his family to grow cocoa here, has the cool demeanor of a European aristocrat. It isn't hard to reckon why. Agostini cocoa is the acknowledged cr�me de la creme, used exclusively in French Valrhona chocolate, among the finest chocolates in the world. "The finest," Agostini corrected, with just the trace of a smile.

Mark asked him his secret. Environment counts, Agostini said. "We have some of the best soil on the island." Also the quality of plants. "And we cut no corners, not in growing and not in post-harvest. We do things the traditional way." He will sell no cocoa before its time.

The estate of 400 acres produces 100 to 120 tons of cocoa a year. Agostini showed us his fermentation vats, where the wet seeds, fresh from the pod, are cured over a period of six days. (The heat produced kills the embryo, turning seeds into beans.) In one of the five drying houses, workers quietly raked mountains of red-brown beans into neat piles with wooden implements. In both places, the fragrance of cocoa is almost overpoweringly intense, like the richest of pipe tobaccos flavored with molasses.

The estate was replanted in the 1930s and '40s to ward off Witches' Broom, Agostini said, and again in the 1960s after an outbreak of another virus. He is now replanting sections of 10-20 acres per year to protect against Black Pod disease, the current nemesis. He propagates his own plants, and is interested in cloning technologies, he said, because he wants to preserve the quality his family has long been known for. "That's what we're selling here," he said, "a certain quality of flavor."

When they met, Roopchand told Agostini that he remembered visiting the estate as a 16-year-old schoolboy. On the way back to Mayaro, we stopped to see Roopchand's farm, a leased seven-acre parcel half-an-hour from his home and new greenhouse. The contrast could hardly have been more dramatic. This thickly forested plot, abandoned for who knows how many years, is choked with undergrowth; the cocoa trees are old and overgrown. Snakes and mosquitoes abound. Roopchand's harvest this year, his best so far, is one ton of cocoa. The sheer amount of work it will take for one man to rehabilitate this farm is staggering to contemplate. "Here you see the reason why so many farmers quit cocoa and start growing bananas," Siela said.

Roopchand, however, seems undaunted by the prospect. He pointed to an open two-acre section at the front of his plot, now planted in corn. Here, he said, is where he is going to plant his first cocoa seedlings.