Raaka – Pink Sea Salt, Dark 71%

About the bar

This deep dark chocolate has a strong cocoa body, with a soft fruity twist. The chocolate is so perfectly balanced, gifting the palate with both high fruity notes – think berries – and low nutty and chocolatey tones. And the salt? It adds delightful crunchiness and it quite simply adds another dimension flavour wise.

About the maker

Raaka is a Brooklyn-based craft chocolate maker that focuses on social responsibility as much as great taste. Founder Ryan Cheney discovered chocolate while on holiday in Thailand, and quickly grew excited about the possible flavours of unroasted cocoa beans. Raaka is now dedicated to making “uncommonly delicious chocolate” crafted from unroasted cacao beans, capturing the brighter, bolder, and fruitier notes of cacao. Raaka is also committed to transparent trade, publishing farmgate prices for all the cocoa that goes into each bar.

The beans

The Zorzal cacao beans are farmed and processed by Reserva Zorzal and their neighbouring farms. Reserva Zorzal is in fact a large bird sanctuary – protecting the wildlife habitat for the Bicknell’s Thrush – in the Duarte province of the Dominican Republic. Its mission is to work to reforest endangered lands, protecting the birds as well as cultivating cacao and macadamia nuts. Burrowed within the bird sanctuary is Zorzal Cacao, a 130-acre fermentary and organic cocoa farm.

Nate discovered this fine cacao farm when on a visit to the Dominican Republic in 2014. During this time, Zorzal Reserva was entering its second year of exporting its cacao. Nate took a sample of the cacao back to Brooklyn, crafted a small test batch of chocolate from it. He and the team loved it. And ever since, Raaka has been buying the beans from Zorzal Reserva. The entire team of the Zorzal Reserva have also visited Raaka in Brooklyn to see the factory and production and to meet the Raaka team.

Raaka have crafted this 71% dark chocolate bar from cacao beans grown by Zorzal Cacao in the Dominican Republic, and liberally sprinkled it with Peruvian pink salt sourced from Salt of The Earth Co.

Allergens*

No allergens listed by maker.

Ingredients

Organic cacao beans, organic cane sugar, organic maple sugar, organic cacao butter, sea salt

*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.

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