75% cacao La Masica, Honduras, 25% organic cane sugar Green Cane Project, Brazil.
No soy, nuts, wheat, dairy.
60g (2.12oz.), 85x186mm (3.3x7.3")
Vic's rating = 9
Deb's rating = 8
Profile: grapefruit, apricot, rye bread. La Masica is a farm operated by Fundación Hondureña de Investigación Agícola (FHIA), a nonprofit agricultural organization in Honduras. The farm functions primarily as a gene bank for the surrounding area and a research center with some small commercial production. Recently, Dan O'Doherty, a cacao expert based in Hawaii, partnered with the La Masica team to improve the farm's post-harvest processing, thereby doubling the price the cacao demands. The result of this collaboration speaks for itself. The raw material is beautifully processed. The flavor is a deep, complex mix of citrus, floral fruit, spicy dark rye break, and chocolate base flavors. This bar was made possible by the generous engagement of our loyal customers, whose pre-orders helped raise funds for buying the beans and packaging. We hope you enjoy it.
For a year we have been working to bring in this very special cacao from an isolated population of trees in Northern Peru. We have finally managed to bring in a "nano-lot" of only four bags of cacao from Juan Tirado's 7.5 acre organic cacao farm in Morropon Province in Piura, Peru. This is the smallest micro-lot ever made into a bar. All four bags of this storied "white-bean" cacao come from a single fermentation and drying cycle, giving us the rare opportunity to create a chocolate that will give new meaning to the term "single origin." More importantly, Juan's farm produces the finest cacao that we have tasted. This is a result of genetics, but also of excellent post-harvest handling, leading to a distinct floral aroma with an extremely mild and buttery flavor of nuts, cocoa, and raspberries.
This bar is made with cacao from Rio Caribe. Rio Caribe is a select grade fully fermented Trinitario cacao from the area of the Paria Peninsula in Sucre State. The Paria Peninsula is located in far eastern Venezuela and nearly touches Trinidad. This incidentally is also the area where all of the regions oil operations are located. This particular lot is from a single estate, and one of the oldest family-owned cacao businesses in Venezuela. As a matter of fact, I have been told that this is more or less the only exporter that has not been ruined in recent years. I have been in direct contact with the owners for all of these months and am really glad to finally be working with them. We will be the first company in the US to put out a single origin Rio Caribe bar. To the best of my knowledge there is only one other company in the world doing a single origin of this variety (Domori).
The flavors of this cocoa are really fun! There are really forward cocoa and coffee flavors, then deep dairy and nut flavors, and hints oranges and spices.
In the southern reaches of the Amazon basin along Bolivia's Rio Beni grows a rare, wild cacao. Massive trees are found along the riverbanks, where their fruits are gathered by cacao "hunters" who travel by boat in search of this rarity. The pods of this unique genotype of cacao are very small, some not larger than a lemon. Hidden inside them, tiny cacao beans hold surprising flavors of plum, jasmine, banana, and nuts. Through much effort, we managed to procure a small lot of this coveted cacao silvestre, worthy of a limited edition release. As with all of our chocolate, this bar contains only two ingredients - cacao beans and cane sugar - delivering a pure, undiluted expression of this extraordinary cacao. We hope you enjoy the fruits of our labor. Silvestre: Plum, jasmine, banana.