By Carolyn Webb
Two pilots were grounded during the COVID-19 pandemic, and to cheer themselves up, they turned to chocolate making in a Perth kitchen.
Friends who tasted the results asked where they could buy more, and so their chocolate-making company, Two Lost Pilots, was born.
Brett Holmes with samples of his Two Lost Pilots chocolate at The Australian Chocolate Festival.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui
Brett Holmes and Brad Laver, both originally from Victoria, are back flying planes but when they’re at home in Perth, they’re making chocolates.
Holmes says it’s fun. Also, “everyone loves chocolate”.
It is a phrase that no one at Sunday’s inaugural The Australian Chocolate Festival at Abbotsford Convent would have objected to.
The sell-out festival showcased the bean-to-bar chocolate scene.
Festival organiser Debb Makin. Her business, Ratio Cocoa Roasters, had a stall at the event.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui
Organiser Debb Makin said stallholders ethically sourced cocoa beans from countries such as Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and Vanuatu, then “perform all the steps to make chocolate, from the bean to the finished chocolate bar”.
“We focus on fine-flavoured cacao with interesting flavours.”
Makin, who owns Ratio Cocoa Roasters in Brunswick, said most chocolate sold in Australia was imported in solid form from overseas, melted and re-sculpted.
Many companies “don’t see a single cocoa bean, they melt down a product that comes from, say Belgium”, she said.
William Angliss Institute students making chocolate at the festival.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui
“They make chocolates. We make chocolate — without the ‘s’.”
She said “ethical” meant a fair price was paid and no child labour had been part of the growing or production.
“We’re buying directly from the farmers, we visit the farms, just like specialty coffee. So we know where our cocoa is coming from,” Makin said. “It’s a very small movement. We compare ourselves to speciality coffee.
“We want to educate people that, like coffee and wine, depending on the cocoa’s origin, you’re going to taste the difference in the flavour.
Luke Spencer, from Spencer Cocoa, and his son, Sam, 11, drove from Mudgee, New South Wales, to the festival at Abbotsford Convent.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui
“And that flavour comes down to a combination of factors, from terroir to rainfall, altitude, fermentation, drying, the skill of the farmer and chocolate maker.”
Like the pilots, many festival exhibitors used to, or still do, work in completely different fields.
For years, Makin was a zoologist in Africa. She has also been a wedding planner.
Luke Spencer, owner of Spencer Cocoa, was a viticulturalist — a vineyard manager in the wine industry.
Spencer, originally from Melbourne, is a chocolate maker in the NSW town of Mudgee where he is soon to open a retail outlet. He imports cocoa from Vanuatu, where he once managed a cacao farm.
Spencer and his son, Sam, 11, drove for 10 hours from Mudgee while Ken Stewart, his grandson, Ky-Mani, 11, and three other relatives drove 50 kilometres from Officer, in Melbourne’s south-east, to attend the festival.
Ky-Mani loved watching William Angliss Institute students make chocolate at their stall.
The family also visited the stall of Stewart’s niece, Fipe Preuss, the owner of Melbourne chocolate-maker Living Koko, which imports cacao beans from the family’s homeland of Samoa.
Stewart said the business was good news for the Pacific island. “It’s more work for the community,” he said.
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