Ritual – Soconusco, Mexico 75%

Description

From making chocolate in their apartment to now running a chocolate factory and chocolate-cafe, Anna Davies and Robbie Stout have transformed Ritual into one of the best know craft chocolate makers in the US. In early 2015 the pair opened their chocolate factory in Park City, Utah, who six years prior meet, fell in love and in parallel discovered the delights of craft, small batch fine chocolate.

For Anna and Robbie, making chocolate is about more than just crafting delicious bars. Rather, Ritual is a chocolate maker that is motivated by “improving the quality of life through chocolate” – from serving the cacao growers to the chocolate lovers. Anna and Robbie are focused on the best ways to express the terroir of the single estate cacao beans they can source.

This dark chocolate is made with cacao from the Rayen cooperative, a recent network of cacao growers in the southwest of Mexico’s Chiapas region: Soconusco. Rayen cooperative focus on quality and continuing the reputation of Soconusco as a region for growing fine flavour cacao. It partners with international chocolate makers and Mexican chocolatiers to boost their production and find new, direct buyers while conserving biodiversity in the cacao forests of Soconusco.

Ritual’s first impression of Soconusco’s cacao was its extreme nuttiness, which holds true to this dark chocolate. It’s nutty, woody, chocolatey, and with a hint of citrus.