Cuvées range Vanuatu 66%

Chocolate Sourcer's Cuvées

Exclusively available to Cercle V customers

Take the risk of excellence with unique single-origin couvertures, made from rare cocoa cultivated in the heart of small plantations. We have discovered and shaped these gems with unique and unexpected flavors, following encounters with men and women, the heartfelt choices for our sourcers, for unprecedented and promising terroirs. With the Sourcer's Cuvées, let your customers travel through a chocolate with an exceptional taste.

A rare and unique cocoa in the Pacific

In 1983, just after Vanuatu became independent, the CDC (or Commonwealth Development Corporation) and Vanuatu’s government reached an agreement to form the Metenesel plantation. Various companies have managed the plantation one by one over the years.
Located in North-Western Malekula Island, in the Vanuatu Archipelago, this plantation has a total surface area of 3,500hectares. This includes 500 hectares of cocoa which are themselves divided into 343 blocks. These blocks are owned by 197 families whose role is to grow and sell fresh beans. Cocoa is grown in combination with coconut trees, various shade trees, vanilla and pepper plants, and kava (a plant endemic to the island).
In 2015, Valrhona got in touch with the plantation and started monitoring how it was developing its cocoa-growing work. When the Vanuatu Cocoa Premium (VCP) company came onto the scene in 2017 and Valrhona visited the site again in 2020, it was clear that the two had a shared interest in collaborating. Valrhona had never purchased cocoa from Vanuatu before - but the plantation’s ambitions, quality cocoa and the VCP project encouraged us to buy our first beans in 2022!

Vanuatu gave us the chance to do exploratory sourcing in the truest sense by going to far-flung corners of the world, meeting new people and uncovering extraordinary projects.

Julien Desmedt, Valrhona Sourcer