Single-Origin Chocolate

Peru60%

Where the Andes merge into the Amazon.

The taste of Peru 60%

Cocoa
Acidity
Fruity

Cocoa from one of Peru's most untouched growing regions, between the Andes and the Amazon. Rare varieties that the farmers themselves selected and preserved. A cocoa we chose for its fruitiness.

Origin

The Valley of Two Rivers

This single-origin cocoa comes from the VRAE Valley, short for ‘Valle de los Ríos Apurímac y Ene’, the Valley of the Apurímac and Ene Rivers. A remote region of Peru where the Andean slopes merge into the Amazon and, depending on location, the cocoa grows at an altitude of roughly 400 to 750 metres. Smallholders cultivate it here in agroforestry gardens, in the shade of other plants rather than in monoculture.

What is special are the varieties. Instead of relying on high-yielding mass-market varieties, the local farmers have spent years selecting and propagating the most aromatic of their native cocoas. This has produced rare, distinctly fruity varieties that hardly anyone outside Peru has ever seen. It is exactly this fruitiness that convinced us.

Fair cultivation

Cocoa with its own signature

We have sourced our single-origin cocoa from Peru for several years through cooperatives in the VRAE region, primarily through the local producers' association. We visit the families regularly on site and know the people behind the cocoa.

Smallholder families join together in the association, collecting and marketing their cocoa jointly. This secures them a reliable market.

The cooperative also conducts its own research into the quality and aroma of its cocoa, thereby strengthening a region that offered few prospects for a long time.

Single-origin cocoa

Fermented in Tornillo wood

After harvest, every step counts. The beans ferment for several days in boxes made of Tornillo wood, a wood that gives off no aroma of its own and lets the cocoa keep its character. During this time they are turned regularly so that fermentation proceeds evenly. The beans then dry slowly in the sun and are turned over again and again until they develop their full aroma.