Gourmet After-Meal

A plot among nature, art and refinement, a longstanding evolution between yesterday and today, two products that for the native dwellers of the New World were common denominators of pleasure and god worshiping. A history that now takes on a whole new spin with the matching between handcrafted fine chocolates and Habanos.

A priceless gift for those who love great details and the gourmet pleasure is what the products presented by Cuba’s Handcrafted Fine Chocolates have meant to be, developed in recent years under the Aurora brand and made of fine, aromatic cocoa from Baracoa. This is part of a project led by the Latin American School of Confectioning, Pastry and Patisserie –attached to Cuba’s Institute for Food Industry Research– that currently runs ten plants across the country and several boutiques selling the products. “This is still a fledgling project,” says director Maria Cristina Jorge Cabrera, “yet it redeems the tremendous quality of Trinitarian cocoa from Baracoa –grown in Cuba’s easternmost end– which stands out for its fine and ecological aroma. Both its liquor and oil are highly coveted all around the world, sold at very good prices that are rendered insignificant when stacked up against the value this raw material acquires once it’s turned into a high-standard end product.” As part of the International Seminar, this edition of the festival, that each year gathers retailers, salespeople and lovers of the finest Premium cigars on the face of the earth, has planned a matching session between four exquisite Aurora bonbons –sour, semi-sour and with Havana Club and Turquino Coffee truffles– and some brands and vitolas from Cuba’s celebrated tobacco. This will be the best way to bring the Cuban Cocoa and Habanos: a Perfect After-Meal Combination conference to a resounding close. “In this sense, we view this event as a highly important space for the promotion of our Handcrafted Fine Chocolates,” Maria Cristina went on to say as she labeled them as “sensational food” whose origins are traced back in the rich cocoa plantations in the vicinity of Cuba’s first-ever village and that’s become an elite commercial product as a result of the excellent benefits this cocoa has to offer, its thorough processing, the handcrafting process, the superior quality of its liquor and oil and, last but not least, the crafting of the entire process, the fine presentation of its cases, featuring great creativeness and an assortment of tablets, solid bonbons, filled chocolates, truffles, rocks and dipped treats. “The future goal is to take Cuba’s confectioning up a notch with qualified staff and all the requirements needed. We want to make chocolates as successful as Habanos and rums are. It’s a chocolate of strong taste and aroma, and we see a tremendous potential in it based on quality and the boom this particular product is enjoying for its antioxidant and nutritional values,” says the director of the Latin American School of Confectioning, Pastry and Patisserie, located in El Guatao, in the outskirts of Havana. The institution opened in March 2001 and since 2008 is part of the regional project entitled The Cocoa Route, coordinated by the UNESCO Latin America and Caribbean Office, two geographical areas that account for 14 percent of the world’s total cocoa production. Yet only a handful of zones in the region grow legitimate organic cocoa, the basis for ecologically pure chocolate like the one harvested in Baracoa. This noble origin and a manufacturing process stripped of chemical additives, beefs up the many healing values the island nation’s chocolate has to offer, mainly as antioxidant, high blood pressure regulator, anti-inflammatory and stimulant, let alone its contents of tryptophan, a compound that brings a feeling of wellbeing to the body. The Aurora brand associated to Cuba’s Handcrafted Fine Chocolates will have a space of its own at the Habano Festival’s Tradeshow, a seducing and exquisite presence that delegates and attendees could enjoy as they get in direct contact with just another of Cuban nature’s prodigies.

The tremendous quality of Trinitarian cocoa from Baracoa –grown in Cuba’s easternmost end and which stands out for its fine and ecological aroma– makes them one of the world’s most coveted species

Matching Sour Chocolate Siglo VI of Cohiba, Partagas 8-9-8, Ramón Allones Semi-sour Chocolate La Gloria Cubana, Hoyo de Monterrey, Romeo and Julieta, H.Upmann With Turquino coffee truffle Montecristo, Cohiba Classic Line, Bolívar With 7-year Havana Club truffle Partagas Lusitania, Cohiba Lanceros, Montecristo