Richmond’s award-winning pastry chefs and chocolatiers, Dominique and Cindy Duby of Wild Sweets, have been ranked as one of the 24 Best Chocolatiers in the World by Georg Bernardini in Chocolate-The Reference Standard.
The Dubys have also released their annual Lunar New Year chocolate art collection for a limited-time. The 2016 Year of the Monkey cocoArt collection ($21.88) features “East-Meets-West” chocolates with exotic flavours commonly used in Chinese cuisine, including lychee-longan, peach-persimmon, mango-green tea and mandarin-orange.
What inspired your flavours? (I’ve never seen any chocolate locally use persimmon!)
We did some research online for flavours that are customary for Lunar New Year and decided these were all flavours that well represented our idea to create a chocolate that was an integration of when “ East Meets West” in the chocolate world.
What do you foresee to be the next big thing in the art of high-end chocolate?
Definitely cocoa bean to bar is the future of premium chocolate and cocoa bean-to-truffle (finished chocolates). This is what Wild Sweets and a very few of the top elite chocolate-makers in the world are doing (I.e Pierre Marcolini in Brussels). Also, we want to take that top elite level even further by incorporating art and science in our approach to cocoa bean to bar/truffle chocolate-making.
What inspires your next unique collection of chocolates?
We wrote a book on unique and novel flavour combinations when it comes to sweets (Wild Sweets Exotic Desserts & Wine Pairings 2003 – Best Cookbook in the World) to include unique ingredients such as mushrooms, vegetables, herbs/spices and proteins. In a sense, we’ve pushed the limit on whats “new” and have done much of it already. Now it’s all about the ‘terroir’ or the origin of chocolate and its inheriting distinct characteristics. Unlike 99% of chocolatiers / chocolate melters in the world, the process is based on our own chocolate made in-house, using distinct chocolate-making techniques (art & science) to bring those forward and create chocolates that are unique in the world. No one else can make the same chocolate as ours……and take those tasting notes of our own distinct chocolate and marry them with specific flavours / ingredients for the best possible synergy.
And what’s upcoming for a new book?
We want to have our new our cocoa bean to bar/truffle space ready before we plan to submit another book project. We have a concept in mind and have tested the water on it. For the rest, you’ll have to stay tuned for it!
About Wild Sweets:
Dominique and Cindy Duby of Wild Sweets in Richmond, British Columbia, are world-acclaimed chocolatiers, pastry chefs and celebrated authors, named 24 Best Chocolatiers in the World. Their artisan and innovative online chocolate boutique and The Atelier Micro- Store specializes in luxurious bean-to-bar chocolates and desserts that are made in-house using premium cocoa beans.
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