My appreciation to your chocolatiers friends as well!
One of these friends is Sander - he's Dutch, but came to Venezuela many years ago, and makes really, really good bonbons. they don't come cheap, but he is an absolute master with cacao.
The other friend(s) are a Corsican family, Franceschi, who arrived in eastern Venezuela in the 1830's. I met them through a squash-playing friend. I knew the kids when they were 5,6 years old.
The Cacao plantation was managed by two of them ( who are now in their 80s) and, yes, it was viable, but they didn't have the skills youngsters have these days.
When the kids graduated from university, in Marketing, Business Administration, Accounting, they took over. In less than 10 years, they transformed the company into a multinational, selling across Europe, Latin America and Japan. They've won prizes and awards internationally for their pure cacao products - you can see them
HERE.
About 5-6 years ago, the eldest partner wrote a book about the history of chocolate, and asked me to translate it into English. That was a daunting task! Don't know whether they actually published it or not, but at least it gave me a privileged insight into how a humble cacao bean is converted into some of the best dark chocolate in the world.
so should be ok.
