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Description: Well Tempered Live; a compilation of #womeninchocolate interviews recorded live during the 2019 edition - and 25th anniversary - of the Salon du Chocolat, at the Paris Expo Porte de Versailles in Paris, France. This special episode of the Well Tempered chocolate podcast features three distinct perspectives, from three very unique countries: Grenada, Honduras, and Russia — all with specialty cacao and bean-to-bar or tree-to-bar concepts at the core of their businesses. Whether through agritourism, direct trade, international export, local distribution, and so on, the leaders of these chocolate companies reveal quick facts about their experience in the cocoa sector. Meet the guests below, and listen to the complementing podcast on Apple Podcasts or download directly here. Podcast RSSFeaturing interviews with: Shadel Nyack Compton third generation proprietor of Belmont Estate in Grenada Instagram: Belmont Estate Mark your calendars (i.e. The Chocolate Notebook) with the dates of the ::Grenada Chocolate Fest May 1-6, 2020:: View this post on Instagram Have yourself an amazing week ahead. Happy Monday #BelmontEstateFamily A post shared by Belmont Estate, Grenada (@belmontestate) on Apr 8, 2019 at 8:45am PDT Monica Pedemonte founder and chocolate maker at Palato Chocolate in HondurasInstagram: Palato Chocolate View this post on Instagram Mónica Pedemonte is a #beantobar #chocolatemaker based in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Since she was a young girl she knew that she wanted to work in food and pastry; she recalls loving chocolate in all forms. Besides her own intuition to become a chef, she comes from two large families that put cooking and eating well as top priorities in life. After high school, she wanted to study Culinary Arts, however family pressure resulted in her receiving degrees in Communication and Business Administration from the University of Houston, in Texas. Mónica returned to Honduras following graduation and worked at a bank for two :long: years. She realized that working in that environment wasn’t what brought her happiness, and she decided to go back to school to study what she’d always wanted. That’s when in 2006 she left for Buenos Aires, Argentina (her father’s birth city) to attend #culinaryschool at the ‘Instituto Mausi Sebess.’ Soon after graduating, she returned home to marry her best friend and boyfriend of many years -- they formed a family thereafter. She never used her culinary degree in a restaurant setting, but remained active in pastry and confectionery from her home, because above all she wanted to dedicate her time and attention to her 3 children, and as so often is the case, a professional chef position wouldn’t have given her that same freedom to raise her family. It was during this time, she began working with #chocolate, making #bonbons and truffles for events. Unfortunately, buying chocolate #couvertures in the country was incredibly expensive as it was made and imported from abroad. Mónica asked herself how a cacao producing country such as Honduras, with hundreds of years of cacao history and whom even sent the first ‘bellotas’ beans back to #Spain during the Conquest, was a place where no chocolate was made, that is to say, transformed #cocoabeans. Alongside her husband, they began to investigate the elaboration of chocolate making and the possibilities of creating a sustainable/profitable business, but they weren’t exactly sure where to start. (Continued in comments) A post shared by Well Tempered (@welltemperedpodcast) on Dec 24, 2018 at 12:25pm PST Olga Yarovikova chocolatier and Managing Director of Amazing Cacao in St. Petersburg, Russia Instagram: Amazing Cacao