The craft chocolate of the Gods.
Bean to Bar
Craft chocolate makers celebrate the large differences between bean vintages
FINE FLAVOR COCOA
Less than 1% of the chocolate on the market comes from 'fine flavor' cocoa beans
ethical sourcing
Craft makers pay more than 3 times commodity prices, enabling better farming conditions
The CRAFT Chocolate story
Did you know nearly all chocolate on the market uses ‘commodity’ cocoa beans, no matter how fancy the packaging? Less than 1% of chocolate uses ‘fine flavor’ cocoa.
Thousands of years ago, the Mayans and Olmecs hailed cocoa as the food of the gods, valuing it so highly they even used it as a currency.
When Europeans arrived on the continent and brought the superfood back to Europe, chocolate consumption exploded and grew massively in popularity until the 1960s. It was then that a devastating disease called ‘witches broom’ spread across Ecuador and the Amazon, whiping out nearly all the cocoa trees, and threatening to end cocoa production.
An ingenious young engineer invented a strain of cocoa tree called CCN-51 that was disease resistant and had tremendous yields for factory farming. Unfortunately, in the words of one famed chocolate tasting expert, it tastes like ‘acidic battery acid.’ This cheap, disease resistant, and poor tasting cocoa spread across the world, and it’s genetic descendants populated much of Africa. While it does a great job getting cocoa to the masses, it tastes nothing like what the Mayans and Olmecs hailed as the food of the gods all those thousands of years ago.
Our signature product
Deep in the Amazon, in places like Ecuador and Belize, independent farmers have struck back. In the early 2000’s, small independent farmers found wild cocoa trees deep in the jungle that hadn’t been tampered with. In 2013, the famed Arriba Nacional was redisovered hidden in the jungle, which is believed to trace it’s genetic linage back to cultivation by the peoples that pre-dated European arrival in the Amazon.
Craft chocolate makers pay a premium for this ‘fine flavor’ cocoa, up to 10 times the price of commodity cocoa. The difference in taste is stunning, beans can produce chocolate with flavors like raspberry, fudge, nuts, honey, and more. Cocoa actually has more than 800 flavor compounds, nearly four times that of wine. Craft chocolate makers treat fine flavor cocoa differently, celebrating the vintages and the true potential of chocolate! While we still won’t be turning down any of the chocolate products we’ve all grown up with, we encourage you to support the craft chocolate ecosystem and all craft makers!