Herencia Esmeraldas – Natural Cocoa Butter

Description

ABOUT THE MAKER

Herencia Esmeraldas is the result of a four-year development project funded by the Italian International Cooperation Agency. It is an association of 400 families – all partners in the business – who drop off their unprocessed cocoa beans at six different collection centres around the region. The beans are then processed centrally before being turned into chocolate bars. During fermentation and drying, sensors in the batches send real-time information to their systems, allowing them to learn from each batch and adjust their processes to obtain the desired flavours and fragrances.

Their mission is to be as transparent as possible, and to show the world that farming can be a sustainable practice. Their name “Herencia” reflects this. Meaning “heritage”, it is in recognition of the generational process they are a part of – how they learned their practice from their ancestors and how they hope to keep the traditions alive by protecting their rich soils and biodiverse ecosystems for future generations.