60% Belize Coconut Milk, Maya Mountain Estate

Vegan

Made with No Gluten

Tasting Notes: Considered a "dark milk"chocolate at 60% this bar is extra creamy with hint of coconut and brownies.

Cacao Bean Origin:  Belize, Maya Mountain Estate

Source of Beans: Uncommon Cacao

Maya Mountain Estate

Founded in 2010, this centralized fermentation put Belize on the craft chocolate map as a pioneer in the social enterprise model.

The country’s first exporter of high-quality, centrally fermented cacao to the U.S. Today, they work with 420 smallholder farming families in the Toledo and South Stann Creek districts. Most of these producers are Q’eqchi’ and Mopan Maya, for whom cacao production goes back generations.

Maya Mountain Cacao’s 100% Belizean Maya team processes all cacao at a centralized facility where three unique stages of sun drying create optimal flavor. Maya Mountain Cacao is focused on building long-term, transparent partnerships with farmers and producing uniquely delicious cacao that supports the communities of southern Belize.

TERROIR

Belize’s rich history of cacao production, combined with the country’s stunning limestone karstic landscape and lowland tropical rainforest, created the perfect storm of flavor that was waiting to be fine-tuned through centralized post-harvest. While ancient criollo can still be found deep in Belize’s nature reserves and small private plots, the vast majority of cacao cultivated by the smallholder Maya farmers in the south are Amelonado-dominant hybrids and other Upper Amazon Forastero hybrids. Maya Mountain Cacao is intercropped with hardwood trees, banana, mango, avocado, and coconut.

Source: Uncommon Cacao