By Laura Dalton
The historical Enoch Turner Schoolhouse was bustling as the second annual Winter Chocolate Show commenced in Toronto.
The show concluded its second year on Feb. 1, fitting 27 local and international vendors into the cavernous schoolhouse.
The Enoch Turner Schoolhouse. (CanCulture/Laura Dalton)
This year, co-founder Paola Giavedoni expanded the event into the church adjacent to the schoolhouse to fit the vendors. The church hosted the festival’s seminars and chocolate tastings.
Giavedoni owns The Candy Bar, a chocolate and candy store at College Street and Ossington Avenue in Toronto. Her store, which opened in 2013, features the creations from chocolatiers across Canada.
“That business started that love for chocolate … So I created these walls of chocolate and it's all these makers that I'm representing in my shop so people can buy from [chocolate makers] across Canada,” she said.
Paola Giavedoni had her own table at the show where she sold some of the chocolates featured in her shop. (CanCulture/Laura Dalton)
Another business owner who attended the event, Nick Davis, is a former journalist and Jamaican originally born in the United Kingdom. Davis runs One One Cacao, a chocolate company he started in 2016, based in Kingston, Jamaica.
Davis spoke on the challenges facing cacao producers in Jamaica, saying that the nation’s 7,000 small farmers are only producing 100 tons per year of raw cacao, where there is an export potential of 3,000 tons per year.
“It's a miniscule amount,” said Davis. “If you compare back to Haiti or compared to Dominican Republic it's a drop in the ocean.”
Davis added that the Dominican Republic exports as much as 66,000 tons annually.
Davis sources sustainable cacao and works with farmers in Jamaica in an attempt to make cultivation more prosperous for the nation. The lengthy process of producing chocolate means Davis can only make one or two batches per year, making recipe improvements a challenge.
Davis’ chocolate won a silver and a bronze award from the Academy of Chocolate in 2017. The academy was founded in Britain in 2005 with the aim to bring awareness to the significance of fine chocolate over common confectionaries, and to promote transparent sourcing of cacao.
Ariane Hansen is a co-founder of DesBarres Chocolate based in Uxbridge, ON. Like Davis, she is very conscious when sourcing the raw cacao used in her chocolate and works directly with a farmer in Jamaica. She explained that she also orders samples of cacao from fairtrade brokers in Guatemala, Belize, Tanzania, the Dominican Republic and Madagascar.
Desbarres chocolate bars featured at the show. (CanCulture/Laura Dalton)
Hansen said she uses the cacao samples to make a sample bar of chocolate and then decides which one is best for her chocolate.
Originally from the Ottawa Valley, Hansen said that she started the business for fun and for the love of chocolate. Her partner Erik Hansen is the other co-founder of the chocolate show.
Marco Mecozzi has been a chocolate maker since 2018. He is the co-founder of Tribe Chocolate based in Colborne, ON. Mecozzi sources his cacao from a supplier in Honduras, who tests the cacao for its quality.
At the show, Mecozzi described the process of tempering, in which the chocolate is heated and then cooled — creating crystals in the cacao butter — and results in the hard and snappy texture of chocolate.
After only two years, Toronto’s annual Winter Chocolate Show has expanded and touched the surrounding Corktown community. After only a few hours into the show, The Enoch Turner Schoolhouse was brimming with eager customers pining to find original and local chocolate.