The Mudgee Day VIEW Club regularly welcomes guest speakers, visiting VIEW Club members and members’ guests to its monthly meetings.
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The guest speaker at the club’s August lunch was chocolate maker Luke Spencer of Spence Cocoa of Mudgee.
Mr Spencer explained how cocoa beans are grown and transformed into chocolate.
Mr Spencer , formerly worked as a general manager of a cocoa plantation in Vanuatu. He moved to Mudgee around 15 years ago to work for a wine company and began Spencer Cocoa around four years ago.
Spencer Cocoa is one of only around half a dozen Australian companies which produce chocolate from scratch.
The raw beans are roasted, cracked and winnowed and the inside “nib” is ground to produce the liquified chocolate. Only three ingredients are used in Spencer Cocoa’s dark chocolate – cocoa butter, cocoa powder and Bundaberg raw sugar. Organic full-cream milk powder from Warrnambool is added to make milk chocolate.
“Most of the chocolate we consume in Australia is imported from overseas,” Mr Spencer said. “I feel quite strongly about the quality of the food we consume, knowing who is producing it, and the ingredients that go into into it.”
VIEW Club members had a chance to taste the cocoa beans, as well as the milk and dark chocolate made by Spencer Cocoa.
They were pleased to learn that chocolate is high in magnesium and anti-dioxidants.
At the club’s September lunch, Geographical Society of NSW tour leader and traveller Heather Rushton shared her photographs of her travels in the the Arctic Circle. These included the world’s northernmost settlement, Longyearbyen in Norway, home of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which hold samples of plant seeds from all over the world.
The club also recently welcomed past national vice president June Greentree, who was completing a road trip which included Parkes, Cobar, Warren and Nyngan.
Mrs Greentree said she was impressed with the many ways VIEW Clubs found to support The Smith Family. The 331 VIEW Clubs across Australia contribute more than $1 million a year to projects such as Learning for Life, helping Australian families to meet educational expenses.
“We are the only women’s organisation which solely advocates for the welfare and education of Australian children,” she told the Mudgee members.
As well as sponsoring seven Learning for Life students, The Mudgee Day VIEW branch has recently contributed 24 hand-made reading rugs and a box of stationery to Learning for Life. The club’s next lunch will be held at the Mudgee Golf Club on Friday, October 6.
