Naive – Ecuador Rough Ground Dark 75%

About the bar

A first-ever release from Chocolate Naive, exclusively for Cocoa Runners, is their ‘rough-ground’ chocolate.

About the maker

Chocolate Naive was founded by Domantas Užpalis in 2011. Domantas is a man that saw chocolate representing his own life – both bitter and sweet. He graduated with an Urban Development master’s degree in London and had spent his whole life involved in the big corporate world. In 2008, Domantas returned back home to Lithuania; confident, driven, ready to face his career at full-speed, but was instead met by an international crisis that played against him.

The solution to Domantas’ negative state of mind and situation was chocolate.

The beans

Naive is known for its experimental flavours in chocolate making, but had yet to play around with textures. This style – rough ground – is very much based on Mesoamerican chocolate-making, or rather on Mesoamerican drinking chocolate. Chocolate’s etymology dates back to the Mayans’ usage of cacao, where they would make ‘xocolatl’ (meaning bitter water). Xocolatl was a frothy, bitter drink made from roughly ground cacao seeds. The Aztecs adopted cacao into their own culture, and for their own personal consumption would add various flavours, like petals, chilli, cinnamon, vanilla and honey. This experimental approach taken by the Aztecs has definitely influenced the chocolate makers of today, from sweetening up the natural ‘bitter’ flavours of cacao, to finding flavours that really work with and complement the cacao.

Inspired by the Mesoamericans, Naive have taken Ecuadorian cacao beans, ground them ‘roughly’ with sugar crystals to produce this Rough Ground 75% dark chocolate. The style is rustic, unrefined, it has a gritty texture, yet the flavour is delicate: floral and slightly nutty.

Allergens*

May contain cereals containing gluten, may contain peanuts, may contain milk, may contain nuts

Ingredients

Cacao, sugar, cacao butter

*Allergen advice: We directly import, and purchase, all products from independent makers and have these shipped by our partner warehouse (which is not certified allergen-free), and so we cannot guarantee that any product will be allergen-free. Even where an allergen is not listed, products may have been produced, shipped, or stored in facilities which handle allergens.

If you would like further information about a specific product, please contact us on [email protected] or contact the maker directly.