Our Dark Chocolate

Just as grapes are the foundation of a fine wine, cacau ( plural for cocoa beans, and properly pronounced Ka Cow) is the cornerstone to fine chocolate. But that’s not all. Just how that cacau is handled during harvest and through its fermentation period is of vital importance. Cacau is typically grown in third world countries where the tools, education, and financial incentive necessary to produce a fine quality product are often not available to the cacau farmer. As a result, the amount of bad cacau outweighs the good. Chocolate companies are often left no choice but to blend beans from various regions of the world to obtain an acceptable taste profile for their product, in order to produce the volume they need to keep the doors open.

Not Us.

After spending 3 years sampling cacau from such places as Ghana, Indonesia, Venezuela, Australia, and Ecuador, we have been extremely fortunate to have finally begun building a business relationship with a plantation in Brazil which produces some of the best cacau we’ve yet to see. Unlike most of today's cacau farmers in Brazil who reside in cities remote from the operations, visit occasionally and resist investment in new technology, the plantation Fazenda Venturosa Cacau Farm takes a diametrically opposite approach. The owners Jim and Lola Lucas (Jim is retired and was a successful business owner in the US) reside at the plantation, closely manage daily activities, and rely heavily on compiling masses of data that are computerized, analyzed and agonized over. Their objective is to consistently produce very high quality cacau.

The chocolate made from this cacau is incredibly fragrant, exhibits light fruity undertones, and possesses very little of the astringent, and often bitter, earthy flavors that most mass produced dark chocolate exhibits. In discussing the amazing flavor of his product with us, Jim indicated that a lot of the astringency and bitterness comes from beans afflicted by a cacau disease called “Witches Broom” which is very prevalent in the current world cacau supply, and something he is careful to ensure it doesn’t make its way into his product.

The care and attention paid at the plantation level, combined with the painstaking attention to flavor and texture profile in our shop has resulted in a world class dark chocolate we’re sure you will enjoy, both in our truffles and by itself in our chocolate bars.