For its edibles entry, Canopy Growth could have gone mass market. But the mega cannabis company opted for an elevated bean-to-bar chocolate experience with an award-winning partner

The former Chocolate Capital of Ontario, Smith Falls may soon reclaim its tasty title. However, this time it won’t be for the commercially produced, chocolate-coated candy bars made by its previous resident, Hershey’s Chocolate.

Edibles are scheduled to hit the shelves mid-December. And Smith Falls-located cannabis producer Canopy Growth has seized this opportunity with higher goals in mind. Earlier this week, The GrowthOp, along with a group of others, got a sneak-peak into what the company, under its Tweed brand, is working on.

‘We knew cannabis, but not chocolate’

The company could have used mass-produced chocolate, melted it down, infused it with CBD/THC, packaged it beautifully, profited and called it a day. But they didn’t.

Instead, they’ve partnered with award-winning chocolate makers Drew and Erica Gilmour of nearby Almonte, Ontario’s Hummingbird Chocolate to guide them in producing sustainable, bean-to-bar chocolates.

In an edible, the team wanted to create a delicious chocolate offering. But what they didn’t know they wanted, until they met the Gilmours, was the bean-to-bar — a process where the company has complete control over the production process right from the cacao beans to the actual end product.

“We didn’t decide on bean-to-bar and start hunting for that specific technique. We decided on quality chocolate — and the Hummingbird team educated us on the differences. We fell in love with their method, which happens to be bean-to-bar,” says Jordan Sinclair, vice president of communications for Canopy Growth. “The point here is that we didn’t know chocolate, we knew cannabis and that’s what makes the partnership so vital.”

In bean-to-bar chocolate-making, the chocolate maker forges a relationship with cacao growers, buys their beans at above-livable wage prices, roasts, winnows, conches and painstakingly goes through each step of the chocolate-making process until they have finished, quality bars. This project, says Erica, started from scratch two years ago.

“They (Canopy Growth) wanted these bars to be the highest quality with the best beans we could source from around the world,” she says. Her husband and business partner Drew scoured cacao-growing regions (20 degrees north and south of the equator), looking for beans that were not only sustainably produced, but also had appealing flavour profiles suitable to the company’s various cannabis strains.

“I went to South and Central America, where I found the best cacao from the highlands of the Dominican Republic, the Amazon Rainforest in Peru and the Coastal Pacific region of Colombia,” says Drew.

The resulting chocolates, which our group sampled on Tuesday using a placebo effect distillate that mimics the flavour of the final CBD/THC infused bars, drew pleased expressions from those not sure of what to expect.

Taste test: ‘We think we’ve got the world’s best cannabis chocolate bar’

We tried three different bars, after dressing up in full-body protective suits, double shoe covers, hair nets, face masks and gloves for a tour of the chocolate production facility.

First up, the Tweed Penelope and Sea Salt (2.5 mg THC and 1.8 mg CBD in each of the four sharable pieces per package) using a blend of Peruvian and Colombian cacao and Tweed’s hybrid Penelope strain — aimed at first-time cannabis consumers. This chocolate has warm, luscious caramel and dark sugar notes that are balanced by the addition of salt flakes.

Next, we tried Erica’s favourite, the Tokyo Smoke 60 per cent Dark Milk Chocolate. Dark milk chocolate is made using a higher cacao concentration, less sugar and a touch of milk powder for creaminess. The result is intensely flavoured chocolate that’s silky smooth and tastes like freshly baked, fudgy brownies thanks to cacao beans from Tumaco, Colombia. This bar is sativa-forward with minimal CBD. It can be segmented into five pieces containing 10 mg THC in total.

For chocolate connoisseurs, the 70 per cent Bean & Bud Dominican Craft Reserve features bright raspberry and citrus nuanced notes from single-origin Zorzal Cacao, found in a bird sanctuary in the Dominican Republic’s central highlands. These “medallions” (two per pack, 5 mg of THC each) are mouthwatering and intense with a hint of acidity.

Health Canada caps each bar at 10 mg of THC, which can take effect an hour after consumption and last from six to 10 hours. The company will initially offer six edibles wherever legal cannabis products are currently sold.

Director of innovation Paul Weaver says, “We think we’ve got the world’s best cannabis chocolate bar.” He might just be right.

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