LONDON.- The bar of the Hispaniola, is the name of the chocolate bar made with organic cocoa beans from the Dominican Republic, which beat several world heavyweight chocolate companies such as Akesson from England, Amedei from Italy, and Michel Cluizel of France.

More than 580 different chocolates

from around the world have been introduced in the first stage of the competition, in the spring, and were judged by more than 40 chocolate experts. In addition to a gold bar Hispaniola, Hummingbird also won three silver and one bronze in prizes.

The company Almonte’s tiny Hummingbird Chocolate has been awarded the best bar chocolate in the world.
At a ceremony organized by the Chocolate Academy in London over the weekend, the Hispaniola Hummingbird bar beat out 14 other gold winners in the world to win the coveted Golden Bean, the first Canadian company to win the prestigious award.

“We thought it was so unlikely that we would win, we had completely forgotten about the awards,” said Erica Gilmour, who started the company with her husband Drew in 2011.

“We realized the night before that we had won, we would have liked to have taken a plane to London.”

The prize, a grain of gold on a pedestal, will be sent to Gilmour.

While Hummingbird now manufactures bars from different countries, it was the cocoa beans from Hispaniola, the Caribbean island that includes Haiti and the Dominican Republic, which first convinced Drew Gilmour, a former aid worker, to put chocolate making to the test

The Gilmours,

who live in Stittsville, are former international aid workers; they import cocoa beans directly from farmers in the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Vietnam.
“That’s why we are so grateful for the excellent cocoa grown by farmers in the north of the Dominican Republic